Valiant
by EverleighBain
Summary: The children of the Rangers of the North learn early the duty that so often keeps their fathers away, and their own roles as part of a scattered, diminishing people. But for one wilful daughter, it will take trial and devastation before she finds her place among the Dúnedain, and comes to understand the fealty that binds her father to an uncertain fate.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Many, many thanks to Cairistiona7, who put a ridiculous amount of effort into helping me with this story as I stumbled around trying to get a grasp of style and plot and character and canon stuff. I would never have pulled this off without her. Also thank you to Linda Hoyland, who was tireless in picking out typos and helping with my glaring Americanized word choices, and to Levade, who encouraged me tremendously and never tired of me prattling on and on about the whys and wherefores of what I was trying to accomplish. All three of these gals are phenomenal writers, and you should go read their stories. Seriously._

_This story takes place in the years between Aragorn's errantries in Rohan and Gondor as Thorongil, and the years when he and Gandalf began the search for Gollum. I am taking the liberty of assuming that he spent a reasonable amount of time among the Northern Dúnedain during that period. I am trying hard to be canon conscientious so if you spot errors or discrepancies, please feel free to point them out!_

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>I<p>

_A Knave and a Miscreant_

From the North came a courier on a bay horse, and I ran after him across the barley field to hear his tale for good or for ill. He was not a Ranger, nor one of the _peredhil_ who occasionally came bearing news, but Halvard the son of the blacksmith, my redheaded rival on his shaggy bay horse. My great-grandfather met him in the village square.

"What is your report?" called Dírhael as the rider drew near, with many of us following, and as I pulled up I could see Halvard grinning his gapped grin and felt nearly giddy with relief.

"The Rangers are coming!" he said. "They crossed the river last night and will arrive soon!"

There came a great gasping exhalation from those gathered, a breeze of joy, but with it a soft muttering and one—Brenia, her husband a Ranger—said loudly, "How many?"

"The sentries did not say," said Halvard. "They bade me come with haste that we might prepare."

I felt a brush at my elbow and knew Sive had arrived without having to turn and look.

"Did he say how many?" she murmured.

"No," I said. "Useless scout." I bumped my hip into hers, herded her around the corner of the nearest house, and when we were out of sight of the gathering I broke into a run. She pounded to keep up with me.

"Where are we going?" she demanded, breathing hard as we darted between cottages and over garden fences.

"If we make haste we can meet them at the narrows!"

Sive stopped so suddenly she left skidmarks in the mud. "No, Eluned." I turned and saw her standing with her skinny arms crossed resolutely. "We can't leave the border fields, not by ourselves. You know the rules."

"Oh, hang the rules," I said. "They've been out in the Wild for a whole season. This is an occasion for a bit of rulebreaking!"

"There are orcs," she said, and I could see from where I stood the very word sent a little tremble through her body. "They came as close as Loudwater falls last spring. And the wolves at midsummer…"

"It's the middle of the day, you ninny," I said. "If you're not coming I'll go on my own." I whirled and dashed away again and did not have to look back to know that Sive would tarry for a moment, her face twisting with indecision, and then my corrupting influence would overthrow her and she would come dashing after me, far too loyal a friend to be left behind.

"We'll be cleaning out the sheep folds with our tongues when they catch us," she muttered as she caught up, and I threw my head back laughing and my hair came loose from its leather tie and blew in a snarl behind me, and I could have run for hours because _the Rangers were coming_, and Sive and Eluned, daughters of the Dúnedain, would be the first to welcome them home.

-o0o-

I had tied Fain behind the chicken coop before we left, and told him to hush his whimpering, for he was many things but sneaky was not one of them. The guards would have spotted his coat like a beacon on a dark night. Even so I felt a twinge of unease the further we went from the village. I missed his white brushing weight by my hip as I ran.

It was late morning when we approached the place where the track ran between two hills cut sharp with bluffs of rock, a narrow gateway to our valley from the north. The path there was thick with trees and hedged in gorse. Twice already we had made use of this cover, melding into the grass and bushes to skirt around the watchmen, but they had been lax with sunlight and good tidings and had not seen us wriggling through the undergrowth like a pair of wool-wearing adders. We were muddy from neck to knees and our palms were as black as the soles of our bare feet and the debris of dead leaves clung to our dresses like leeches. At one point Sive caught her hair on a low branch of hawthorn and I had bellied back to untangle her. Siarl at his sentry not fifty yards away sat and chewed on a stem of clover. We had suppressed our hysterics, our ribs aching with laughter we had barely held in, and finally wisped away into the trees unseen. A snarl of Sive's dark hair on a twig we left behind as recompense.

But Siarl was a boy untested, armed only with a dagger and a horn on his belt. I knew better than to be stealthy now. I knew of long bows that could be strung in an instant, and arrows nocked with flying, faultless hands. I knew how quickly a knife could spring between a man's fingers and go singing to its target like a dart. And I remembered them in their first days home from a long patrol, remembered how my father would wake violently if a mere wind creaked the window, how he sat always with a wall at his back, how he would grow restless and hunt up the others and snarl about how tired he was of their ugly faces, even as the tightness of his shoulders drained and runneled out into the ground. I remembered the rough rake of his fingers through the younger ones' hair.

No, it would not do to startle them, not with their long days in the Wild still so raw on their hearts.

There would be no chime to herald them, no jangling hardware. They all took the same precautions. I had seen my sister and mother hitch every ring and buckle of my father's saddle in soft buckskin, and the hooks where his sword hung under his stirrup. They had knotted and knotted those ribbons of hide. When my father came in and I asked him why he had kissed my mother's neck and answered, "Because stealth is our first defense."

So we sat by the path between those two prows of stone and waited for the sounds of horses to reach us. We listened for hoofbeats and picked at the grass and laughed at ridiculous nothings. After a time I should not have been surprised that instead of horses, we heard from above us a voice that said, "Ho, little wildlings. You are a long way from your burrow."

"Uncle!" Sive cried before I could look up, and when I did I saw Iarladh bounding down the rock towards us. As soon as he was on level ground Sive flung herself at him and leapt and caught him around the neck, her feet dangling, and he laughed his low laugh and lowered her to the grass.

"You've grown taller," he said, his hand on her hair, and then, "You should not be out this far on your own. What will your aunt say?"

"She is not well again," said Sive, not looking her mother's brother in the face. "I did not wish to wake her this morning."

I did not miss the fleeting crease of Iarladh's forehead, nor how carefully Sive skirted. But then he smiled and squeezed her shoulder. "I suppose I'll have to roust you both up before the Chieftain," he said, "for breaking the rules."

He did not get a chance to do any rousting, because at that moment I was seized and hefted by a strong hand and dumped belly-down across the bow of a saddle. The same hand clamped me and though I kicked and scraped and struggled I could not escape.

"What say you, my lord?" said the voice above me. "Shall we execute the scoundrels for such blatant insubordination?"

I sniggered and wriggled and dug my thumb into Morien's side between shoulder and girth, made her hide ripple and her feet skitter sideways, and he patted me compellingly and told me to be still.

"Come, Halbarad," said another voice, one mild with amusement. "There is much work to be had out of these two. Surely a flogging would suffice."

I lifted my head and saw we were surrounded by a company of Rangers, filthy and safe and here at last, and I rolled and twisted upright and straddled Morien's neck the wrong way, so I faced him over the front of his saddle. I was grinning like a lunatic.

"Hello, Ada," I said, and he grinned back and took my face in both hands and kissed me hard between the eyes.

"I suppose a flogging will do," he said ruefully. A chuckle rippled through the company, but I did not greet them yet. I was relearning the sight of him, his grey eyes bagged with weariness, his beard grown longer than he was wont to keep it in the warmer months. His sleeve was cuffed to his elbow and his forearm wrapped in linen discolored with grime and old blood. I touched it with a fingertip.

"Only a scratch," he said, brushing his knuckles under my chin. I turned and saw the Chieftain alongside us, leaning his elbow against the bow of his saddle, his cloak in tatters and his own sleeves crusted with mud. But the wrinkles around his eyes were deep and I found myself grinning at him too.

"Welcome home, my lord," I said in Sindarin, the words rolling formal and resonant over my tongue. He winked and nudged my knee.

"Hello, little cousin," he answered in the Common. "Not bothering to stay out of mischief, I see." His keen eyes fell on Sive and she shifted uncomfortably, pressing her back against Iarladh. She held our Chieftain in intermingling awe and terror and most of her protests against my antics stemmed from a fear that he would either scold her or use some Elvish magic to turn her into a salamander, though so far in her experience it seemed he had done neither.

"Sive corrupts me," I said sorrowfully. "I beg her to obey the rules but she will not listen."

In front of those men she was far too shy to defend herself against such absurdity, but I saw her brows collide in indignation. Fortunately for Sive, my father was no fool. At eleven she was nearly two years younger than I, and he knew full well which one of us led and which one followed. He tugged a lock of my hair where it had tumbled over my shoulder. "You are a knave and a miscreant and I don't know why Sive endures you."

"Neither do I," Sive ventured to say, and the Chieftain rumbled with laughter.

I looked over the company, counting heads—six, seven—and my breath caught in my throat. Ada watched me carefully and when my eyes flew to his he caught my face, smoothed my cheekbone with his thumb.

"Elidir," he said quietly, and I was struck so suddenly with sorrow that for a moment I could not speak. I remembered Brenia, mere hours before, that ringing voice—_how many?_ I wondered if she had already known, felt the cut, the departure in her own spirit. Their son was not yet six years old, and her belly bulged with their second. Her time would draw near with my mother's, before harvest ended. Elidir, our neighbor.

"Bandits?" I whispered.

Ada shook his head. "Orcs," he said, and the same tremor that had passed through Sive shimmered down my spine.

"This close?"

"Too close." His hand gripped my shoulder and shook it lightly. "You two should not be straying from home," he said.

"We wanted to meet you," I said. My voice sounded small in my ears.

His face softened. "I know you did." He hooked one arm around my middle and turned me, set me in the saddle before him. He shifted and took up the reins. Usually I rode behind him—I was starting to take up too much room. But this time I ignored my legs pinched against the saddle-bow and was glad for the warm wall of his chest against my back. Beside us Iarladh boosted Sive onto his own horse and mounted in front of her. The Chieftain gave a little nod.

"Let us end this troubled outing," he said softly. The company strung out behind him on the trail but Morien took a handful of jogging steps and drew alongside Sael the Chieftain's horse, and we rode like that in tandem all the way to the village gate. Occasionally the movement of the horses would bump Aragorn's knee against my father's, but I don't think either of them minded. They did not speak, but then they rarely did. They rarely needed to.

-o0o-

I perched on the lowest branch of the old crabapple tree by the fence, one bare foot swinging, and watched the Chieftain knock on my neighbor's door. My great-grandmother Ivorwen was beside him, and my mother with her hand pushing into her back against the burgeoning weight of her belly. There was a field and a vegetable patch between our houses and I could not hear what was said, only murmurs on the wind, but I saw the door open, saw Brenia come out onto the front step. The straightness went out of her, like someone had hit her hard behind the knees, but Aragorn was ready and he caught and lifted her, carried her into the house. The women followed and the door closed heavily behind them.

Sive was not with me. She lived with her aunt and uncle, and though Iarladh was too docile to do little more than scold her mildly for our various escapades, Sive herself had succumbed to a fit of repentance and gone along with him back to their house. Her aunt Sidonie was ailing again, Sive had told me, and she did not wish to worry her into further infirmity. The truth hung silent and uncomfortable between us: Sidonie had not bothered with Sive's whereabouts for a week at least. She lay abed nursing tinctures while her charge ran rampant at my side, more often than not taking meals and rest beneath the roof of Halbarad. It was my own mother who mended the tears in Sive's worn-out skirts and made her wash her hair and eat her cabbage. But that night, Iarladh was home, Sive's uncle who loved her in his own absentminded way, and the lure of having her own family, and not a borrowed one, had been too appealing for her to resist. But I missed her as I stared at the closed door of Elidir's house. The silence would have been easier to bear with her wry absurdity to divert me.

Fain lay at the foot of the trunk with his great head on his forepaws, and I was suddenly overcome by the desire to drop to the ground and bury my face in his huge hoary ruff. But he had found something dead and decaying to roll in the night before and smelled so horrendous I could barely be near him, and besides that, my mother would make me bathe if I came home stinking of carcass. I did not want to spend the whole evening hauling and heating water—I wanted to spend it at my father's feet listening to the tales of their long patrol.

But it was not to be. My mother was less than amused by our little frolic through the woods, and that night as soon as Celwen and Lútha and I had cleared the table and I had splashed sullenly through a heap of dirty dishes, she swooped in like an eagle and sent me up the loft ladder with a swat to the seat of my kirtle.

"To bed with you. Mighty rovers need much rest." She said this so serenely that it would have been impossible to tell that she was wroth with me, but I knew better. She had that look in her eye and I obeyed with the barest protestation.

I had my wiles, though, and after I had shimmied into my nightdress and tugged my fingers through my tangled hair, I blew out the lamp and became very still. Under the eaves lay a wide mattress stuffed with straw and goosedown and I knew from experience that I would hear nothing but mutters from there—some design of my mother's, no doubt. I had every intention of worming against the wall to the edge of the platform that looked down into the room below. Our house was larger than most, and because of that it often served as hall and meeting-place, although that night there were only my parents and Aragorn our Chieftain, and Caradoc who was not yet married and who often supped with us when the Rangers were home. The others had gone to their own families.

I had spent much time wriggling around on my belly that day and was becoming confident with my skills, but I could barely choke back a yelp when a rough board caught my nightdress and ripped it, driving splinters into my knee. I collapsed and lay still, listening for sounds of suspicion from below, but when the droning conversation continued without lull I eased forward until I could peer from the shadows over the edge of the loft.

Ada sat nearest the hearth with his chair pushed back from the table. Lossiel had climbed into his lap to sit with her head butted up under his chin and her thumb in her mouth. It had taken her an hour or two before she warmed to him again, a thing I knew he hated—when he was gone so long she forgot his face and the sound of his voice. But he had lured her with darting looks and spidery fingers towards her belly and now she had reclaimed him and would not be prised away. She had still been two when he had left. She was a summer baby.

Across from him sat Caradoc, and beside Caradoc, Aragorn, sprawling and smoking and stretching his legs as if he hadn't felt a real chair beneath him in months. He likely hadn't, come to think of it. He had bathed and changed out of his tattered shirt before coming to my mother's house, had likely forced Caradoc to do the same. Both looked a little raw around the ears from scrubbing. Iolanthe passed the young Ranger and let her hip skim his shoulder as she refilled his flagon, and I snorted and wondered whom Ada was more likely to skin: Iolanthe for swaying so shamelessly, or Caradoc for watching with his jaw hanging wide. I barely contained a snort of laughter when the Chieftain reached without looking and bumped the younger man's mouth shut with the back of his hand.

Lútha, ever dutiful, sat in the corner with her basket of darning. She was right below me and with just a little leaning I could probably have spit down the back of her dress, but then I would be found out and all hope of eavesdropping would be lost. She was sixteen that autumn, demure as a dove, and could sew as well as our mother. Her weaving was tight and even, her patterns inventive. She wore her hair braided tight to her head and was never dirty. I persistently disgusted her.

Beneath me in age was Celwen, seven and spoiled, for between us had been two who departed before they had fully rounded our mother's belly. As I watched that night from the loft, Celwen sat in a chair at the head of the table, feet dangling, barely tall enough to rest her chin on the edge. She swung her feet and sulked because our mother had told her to sit still or she would have to go to bed. I knew the latter would eventually be inevitable.

Nana bustled. It seemed the bigger the babe inside her grew the less she could stand to be still, and especially with Rangers to feed and cosset. But when she passed behind Ada he cupped her bottom and reined her in to him. The men were talking harvest and supplies and winter coming—anything but war—and he did not turn from the conversation but pulled her close and splayed his hand over her swollen middle. This perhaps was not polite in the company of the men, but even when she flushed and tugged away half-heartedly, murmuring his name, he did not release her. He set his lips against her bulge and I heard Aragorn laugh lowly. My father was hardly being subtle.

"We shall take our leave," said Aragorn, rising. He nudged Caradoc in the ankle with the toe of his boot. "Our tales can wait to be told."

My mother escaped long enough to see the two men to the door, and before he departed Aragorn laid his hand on her belly, said something I could not hear that made her throw her head back laughing. It was a clear clean sound and I had not heard it for many weeks. The Chieftain took up his sword where he had stood it inside the door and raised the hilt in farewell.

"Halbarad," he said, and Ada returned the salute with his tankard of ale.

"Sire."

I didn't have to see his face to know that he was grinning.

The door closed heavily and Ada murmured to Lossiel, slid her off his lap. He nuzzled her dark hair for a moment and then patted her towards the loft.

"Girls," he said to my remaining sisters. Lútha put away her darning and rose and took Lossiel by the hand. Celwen scooted off her chair and went to our father and planted her hands on his knees.

"I'm glad you are home," she said, looking up at him. "And I don't want to go to bed because sometimes when I wake up you've gone."

"I'm glad too, sweetling," he said, gently tugging her earlobe. "I'll still be here in the morning."

"Promise?"

He laid his fist over his heart. "Promise." He said it in Elvish and she nodded once, accepting his vow as a being solemn one, and then turned and climbed the ladder without further argument. Even Iolanthe, who deemed herself too old to be sent to bed, did not protest. She laid the washing rags out to dry and untied her apron and kissed his cheek and departed to her tiny nook behind the kitchen where she slept and we weren't allowed to enter. When she had vanished, my father looked straight up to where I lay in the dark beneath the rafters.

"Eluned," he rumbled.

My belly lurched. I poked my head over the edge and said in a small voice, "Yes, ada?"

"Go to bed."

"Yes, sir." And I did. I lay next to Lútha and felt Celwen snuggle into my side. As I drifted off I heard my mother again, a purr of laughter from below us, and then I let sleep take me and was too warm and too happy to care that the Rangers had told no tales for me to overhear.

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><p><em>Peredhil—half-Elven (plural)<em>


	2. I Would Make No Promises

_A/N: Many thanks to my lovely betas: Cairistiona, Linda Hoyland, and Levade._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>II<p>

_I Would Make No Promises_

_I could taste death, smell fear. Elidir writhed on the ground before me and I fell to my knees and packed my hands into his body to hold back his fountaining blood. Around me were shouts of challenge and the ringing of swords, but I could not wrench my eyes away, for Elidir's face had changed and it was suddenly my father I knelt beside and fought to keep alive, my father's blood that pounded from between my fingers with every pulse of his hammering heart…_

I woke gasping and did not dare go back to sleep. It was not yet light out and I eased from around my sleeping sisters and backed down the ladder in my nightdress. My father was sitting and smoking by the snapping fire. He lowered his pipe with one hand and put the other to his lips.

"Shh," he whispered. "Your mother still sleeps."

It was unusual for me to be up before the rest of the household. I crossed the room and sank to the wooden floor beside his chair. The night's cold had crept into the corners of the house and I shuddered hard and pulled my knees up to my chest inside my nightgown. I hugged them and settled my chin on top.

"How did he die?" I asked after a long silence.

It was if he had been expecting the question, or pondering it himself. He stared into the flames but his hand stretched out and settled heavy on the back of my neck, his thumb rubbing behind my ear. I felt a rivulet of tightness trickle out of me at his touch and became immediately warmer.

"Quickly," he said. "He took a mortal wound and did not linger long after."

"Were there many of them?"

"Not by the time we had finished."

I saw my mother had rewrapped his arm in a clean bandage. It was his sword-arm, his pulling arm. I was warming but my dream was still an oily smoke in the cellar of my mind and I did not want to imagine what kind of foul weapon had scored him.

He caught me looking and his mouth tugged wryly. "It is no battle wound," he said, and sounded—embarrassed? Grimacing he stretched his arm, rolled his fist on the end of it.

"How…"

"I tackled your cousin and in the scuffle rolled over my knife."

I lifted my chin from my knees and stared at him. "The _Chieftain_?"

His eyebrow rose. "You think I could not whip him if I wanted?"

"Well, surely, but you _tackled_ him?" I was trying to imagine this and to my surprise it was easier than I might have thought, at least when it was Ada doing the tackling.

"He was being impertinent."

"But he's…" I trailed off. It occurred to me that perhaps a degree of reserve was customary of Aragorn when he was home among us—the elders and families looking to him to lead them. It would not do for him to be tussling in the dirt with another grown man like a pair of hound puppies. Rangering though was another matter, and it suddenly made sense that levity would be a welcome thing, however undignified the source.

"So did you?" I asked.

"Did I what."

"Whip him?"

He chuckled around his pipe-stem. "It was a near thing."

At that moment there came a pounding, so loud and urgent it made me jump, and I leapt up before Ada could and yanked open the door.

And was nearly mowed over. A figure burst over the threshold, the sword at his side ringing on the doorframe, and in the long moment it took me to recognize a black-haired son of Elrond and overcome my astonishment that he had just staggered unceremoniously into _my_ house, my father rose so suddenly his chair was cast back and commanded me to fetch the Chieftain. "And make haste," he snapped. I did not bother with cloak or shoes but whirled and raced away.

Aragorn answered my pounding and looked startled to see me, standing there as I was too labored to breathe, feet bare and nightdress mud-splattered, but he grasped my heaving shoulder and waited until I gasped out, "_Peredhel_… at our house… he said to come quickly."

He turned back into his dark cottage and yanked on his boots. "Wounded?" he asked, even as he snatched a satchel off a hook on the wall.

"I don't know. Yes… I think perhaps."

He beat me to the house, although I was not far behind, and when I came into the main room I saw the newcomer had sank into a chair and was leaning heavily against the back of it, one white-knuckled hand gripping the seat. Blood had sheeted down his flank and thigh and was dripping from the edge. He had shed cloak and leather jerkin and Aragorn knelt beside him and was tugging the _peredhel's_ shirt from his breeches to bare an angry gouge above his hipbone. When Aragorn pressed near the wound his patient growled, "Gently, Dúnadan."

Aragorn glanced at me, and up towards the loft, and then he spoke what sounded like a question in a tongue I did not understand, one that pealed with perfect tenor like a tower full of heavy bells, and I was nearly too entranced by the golden sound to be annoyed that the Chieftain was obviously starting a conversation he did not wish for me to hear. The newcomer—for I did not know which twin it was who sat dripping blood onto the floorboards—answered in the same lustrous language, though his words were bitten out between gritted teeth.

By then my sisters had clustered at the top of the loft ladder and were staring down like owlets. My mother appeared from around the curtain that concealed the big bed in the back of the house, tying back her hair; she went immediately to the fire and stoked it and pushed heating-stones deep into the coals. She sat on her heels for a moment before rising, her hand splayed hard in the small of her back. My father came in the back door with a dripping bucket in each hand, and Iolanthe followed him carrying more. She set her burden by the fireside and retreated to the washstand by the window to stare at the _peredhel_ with unblinking eyes.

My mother hefted one bucket, poured it into a great shallow pan to heat, started to lift a second and then set it down with a splash. She braced her hands on her knees.

"Thaliel," said Ada, laying a hand on her back. "We have things well in hand. Go lie down."

I became anxious when she obeyed him without protest. My mother was hardly frail, and it troubled me to see her so. By her reckoning she had a month left at least before the babe would come, but already she was larger than I had ever seen her, with Lossiel or Celwen. She was pale as she vanished behind her curtain again. Iolanthe followed her with a pitcher and cup.

My father looked up at the loft. "Lútha, take your sisters back to bed," he said, and I realized it would be expedient to make myself useful or suffer the same fate. I sidled along the wall to the fireplace and set more water on to heat, hastened it with steaming stones. I went to the trunk in the corner and burrowed and emerged with a length of linen, and avoiding Ada's eye, began to tear it into bandages. I circled wide around him and slipped up beside Aragorn and laid them on the table next to his hand.

"Thank you, Lune," he said as I backed away. He spoke again in the unfamiliar tongue and I felt a flare of frustration—our wounded guest was taut with pain and agitation and the Chieftain's face was grave. My father stood beside the table with his arms crossed over his broad chest, a deep crease between his dark brows. I was confused. I could not guess what had occurred but my mind raced with many imaginings. The _peredhel _answered, and I did not have to understand his words to hear the anger in them. I could see the sudden biting light in his eyes even from where I stood against the further wall. I was startled when the Chieftain countered sharply, his voice ringing with command. He turned a grim face towards my father.

Before he could speak, Ada nodded tightly and disappeared behind the curtain. I edged closer to that end of the house, ears straining to hear what he was saying to my mother and sister. Aragorn ended my eavesdropping with a request of his own.

"Eluned, would you refresh my water, please?"

I hurried to obey and as I poured it steaming Aragorn behind me said crisply in Sindarin, "I'll hear no more of it, brother, not with you near collapsing and all but bled out." I turned back to the table in time to see our guest open his mouth, presumably to protest, but Aragorn drove a seeking thumb along his lowest ribs and the _peredhel _hissed instead and tightened his grip on the seat of the chair.

"Two broken at least," said Aragorn. "And likely a third in the back. You're slowing in your old age."

The one he had called _brother_ replied with a foreign, elegant phrase, and Aragorn allowed himself a huffing chuckle through his nose.

I set the pan of clean water on the table and suddenly found myself unable to look the newcomer in the face. I considered his boots instead—they were of calfskin the color of ripe wheat, heeled for riding and tall as his knees, and around his calves were winding ivies of runes I could not read. The inner surfaces where the stirrup-leathers rubbed were chalky with dried sweat and glossy red from leather buffing leather. Hanging from the rim of the nearest one was a talisman of pale blue feathers and glistening shell, and I edged a little nearer to study it better.

"It is called abalone," said a voice in Sindarin, though I did not recognize the final word. "It comes from a sea creature."

"Like a fish?" I said, even as I realized that his Elvish carried the same rolling lilt as Aragorn's did, somehow less stilted than what I had grown up learning.

"More like a river-clam, or a snail."

Something about hearing the word _snail_ from such a distinguished individual cured me abruptly of my shyness. I raised my head and found myself being observed by bright grey eyes. There seemed to be more light in them than there should have been in a smoky room lit only by fire and lanterns and slow creeping dawn, though as Aragorn began to ply his threaded needle they clouded briefly with pain. I had only ever seen _peredhil _from a distance as they rode through the village or away with the Rangers. I was intrigued to study this one so closely.

"She favors you, Halbarad," he said in the common tongue, his accent musical, and I turned to see my father rejoining us in the main room.

Ada snorted. "And her mother in temperament."

I felt a change in subject would be prudent and so I mustered my courage and asked, "Your pardon, my lord, but are you the Lord Elladan or the Lord Elrohir?"

Aragorn ceased his ministrations long enough to reach down and bat the boot-charm with his fingertips. "You can always tell Lord Elrohir by his little vanities," he said, stealing me a wily glance.

"We are well met, my lord," I said in Elvish, attending carefully to my enunciation.

"Well met indeed, Halbaradiell," he answered, lowering his dark head, and when it raised he was smiling.

Without thinking, I asked what seemed to me the next obvious question. "Where is your brother, my lord? I have never seen you apart from him."

His smile tightened, and though it did not disappear I realized his eyes had become very grave. I also realized that he was hesitating to answer, and I was feeling the first twinge of discomfiture at my blunder of etiquette when my father answered for him.

"Lord Elladan is north on the Bruinen, Eluned," he said. "Our people there have been attacked and he is helping them defend themselves. Lord Elrohir came to warn us and to have his wounds tended."

"Attacked by who?" I asked as my father pulled on his coat and buckled his sword-belt over it. I felt fear surge like bile in my throat. "What do you mean, attacked? Adar, where are you going?"

His face was grimly drawn. "I'll have them start preparing," he said, his eyes on Aragorn. "They won't be pleased, but we shall be ready by midmorning."

"No!"

Three heads snapped around and I realized it had been me who had shouted. My face burned but I shoved away from the table and crossed to my father, drew myself up as tall as I could. I faced him squarely. "You cannot leave. You've only been home one night!"

"Eluned…"

"What has happened? I am not a babe like Lossiel—you must tell me or I will follow you and find out on my own!"

I was aware of eyes on my back and the sound of my own voice which had risen above what I would customarily have considered a safe tone, at least when directed at my father. But the stone in my throat was a warning that I would have to stay angry or break down and cry. I hauled my sleeve hard across my eyes. "There are orcs, aren't there. And they are coming nearer."

Ada sighed. He glanced again at the loft, and when he answered his voice was low. "Yes. Lord Elrohir came from above the falls and there were orcs crossing. He and Lord Elladan slew the ones they found but we fear there may be more, and there are farmsteads there along the river." He put his hand on my hair. "It will not be a long chore."

"But it will be dangerous. You cannot go!"

Ada looked over my head, sighing long again. His hand slid to my back and drew me with him as he opened the door and went out into the yard. The wind was blisteringly cold in the pale dawn and my nightdress was thin but the chill in my bones was from something else entirely. He turned me to him when the door had shut.

"We must do this, Lune," he said. "It is our duty to safeguard our people and defend our borders."

"We are Dúnedain," I said, and bitterness crept into my voice. "We have no borders."

"Our borders are wherever our brothers dwell within," he said. "And now our folk on the river are under attack, and we will go to their aid."

I pinched my eyes shut and in that sudden dark my dream leapt at me again, those slavering faces, the fountaining blood. I remembered Brenia crumpling like a dress dropped to the floor. Who would bear my own mother up, if my father were slain, and the Chieftain with him? In my heart I knew that they had hunted orcs all of my life and long before, and defeated more than could be remembered, and had always come home to us. But there in the cold morning I thought of Elidir in some distant lonely cairn with nothing but the ruins of our long-fathers guarding his bones, and the heart of his beloved encased in stone forever with him. His children would never know the caress of his hard callused hands on their hair.

"I'm coming too," I heard myself say. "I can help our folk carry their belongings. I can cook and look after children." _I can keep you in my sight. _

When I dared to look up at him his face had become hard. "Coming from any of my other daughters, I would simply tell you no and be done with it."

"So you will tell me yes?"

"No." The word was a growl.

"Ada, I—"

"You listen to me, child. Ever you have skirted my commands and got away with it, and I have little heart to reprimand you, not when I am so often away. But you must obey me in this." He softened then, laying his hand on my shoulder and gripping. "You must stay where you are safe."

"But you will not be safe," I said.

He grinned at me, a perilous grin. "No goblin rabble will lay iron to this old hide," he said. "But it is _your_ hide that should worry you, if you do not heed me and stay where you are put." His thumb on my collarbone pressed lightly, warningly, into my skin. "Promise me."

I almost faltered then. I do not think I had ever in my twelve years defied him to his face. My tactics were more roundabout, and ever dependent on my charm and his good nature. But this was different. I sucked my cheek between my teeth, bit down until I bled.

"I will not unless you can," I said. "Unless you can promise me that you will come home alive."

My father was an honorable man. He would not make a promise he might not be able to keep, and I favored him. _Halbaradiell_, I had been called, and I would make no promises either.

* * *

><p><em>Peredhel—half-Elven (singular)<em>

_Halbaradiell—daughter of Halbarad_

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><p><em>Thank you so much for reading!<em>


	3. Crafty, Perhaps, But Not Wise

_A/N: As always, many, many thanks to Cairistiona, Linda Hoyland, and Levade, without whom this would have never seen the light of day._

_Disclaimer still applies._

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><p>III<p>

_Crafty, Perhaps, But Not Wise_

Morien was snuffling away with her nose in the manger when I climbed into her stall and joined her head in the hay-rack. She still wore a sweaty girth-mark that no amount of brushing could iron out, and the skin above her withers was feathered with white and wrinkled from long days under saddle. I felt suddenly guilty for tickling her the day before, weary as she was, and with no rest on the horizon. I slid my hand beneath her heavy forelock and scrubbed the white star between her eyes.

"You get to go with them," I said sourly, but then I regretted my tone. She was a doughty thing, Morien, but gentle as a hound, and surefooted on rocks and muddy hillsides. I was glad to know she bore my father on his errands. She lipped my ankle, those long coarse whiskers tickling, and chose to ignore me in favor of her oats.

"If I had a horse I could follow the Rangers," I muttered aloud.

I nearly jumped through the stable ceiling when I heard a familiar voice behind me. "They would send you home to your naneth, Eluned. Even if you did manage to catch up with them."

I turned narrowed eyes to see Halvard leaning against the weight of the saddle hooked over his hip, looking reedy and speckled and carrot-haired, and so pleased with himself I wanted to spit. The retort that rose to my tongue was a cruel one and I remembered a distant warning, one I had so far managed to heed, and with a twist of will I bit the words back. Halvard's father had taken an orc-arrow in the leg, before either his son or I were born, and now he pinned up his right trouser-leg and made up for the loss with the sprightly use of a crutch. He was the blacksmith, Hald, and merry, though I had seen him watch the Rangers ride away, his eyes full of something I could not quite fathom. I liked Hald. His boy was ever a trial for me.

"You have manure on your face," I said instead, and watched in satisfaction as he pawed at perfectly clean cheeks. He turned to me, annoyed, but did not bait me further, and that fact alone was enough to cause a stab of curiosity.

He must have known it, too, because he said, "I bet you can't guess where I'm going today."

"To Udûn in a picnic basket?" I suggested.

His brushy red brows sprang together. "_No_," he said severely, but then his face smoothed into smug indifference. "I am riding with the Rangers."

"Liar," I spat, lurching to my feet suddenly enough that Morien jerked her head up in alarm. I leapt down from the manger and advanced on Halvard where he stood in the aisle between the stalls.

He was maddeningly cool. "Ask your adar," he said. "I am going as a scout. Me and Siarl. The Chieftain commanded it." He raised a lazy eyebrow with that last statement, knowing that with it his words were incontestable.

I gripped the rail that separated us. "Camp boy, more like it," I said, trying to sound uncaring, but I could not keep the tremor from my voice. "Chopping wood and digging the latrine."

"But I will be with them," he said with a slow smile. "And you will be here embroidering underthings, or whatever it is you are good for these days."

My temper frayed clean through at that, and with a snarl I lunged for him. I had given up fighting Halvard with my fists a year or two before and my sudden assault startled him. Hampered by saddle and surprise, he toppled backward onto the floor. The impact of his head on the flagstones rattled up my arms and it took me a moment to realize that he was not fighting back. He was limp beneath me, his mouth cracked open, and with a frightening little spasm he went completely still.

I pushed away from him and shook his shoulder lightly. "Halvard?" His eyes were rolled back white in his head. "Halvard, wake up." My words began to pitch high. "Halvard, please, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to hurt you, please wake up." I was aware of voices coming as I shook him harder, and then an arm swept me aside and my father was kneeling beside Halvard, his big hand pressing the thin chest.

"Get Aragorn," he barked over his shoulder, and I heard the sound of swift departing feet. There were other murmurs and old Coru knelt on the other side, lifted Halvard's fluttering eyelid with a gnarled, gentle thumb.

"Just a little knock on the head," he murmured, his voice rustling like chaff around the old white scar across his windpipe. "Already he's coming around, see?"

"I did not mean to," I said shrilly. My eyelids were sandy with threatening tears. "I didn't mean to knock him down, I swear I didn't."

They spilled in earnest when my father rounded on me with fire in his eyes and curtly said, "Go home."

He turned back to Halvard without sparing me another look, and I found I had nothing to do but mop my face with my sleeve and obey him. I passed a hastening Aragorn on my way out but could not meet his eyes. I knew their customary kindness would undo me completely and so instead I snatched back a lurching sob and ran towards home. Iolanthe was sweeping near the door when I burst in and she called after me as I scrambled up to the loft, but I ignored her and flung myself face-down on the mattress in the corner.

I lay there long enough to begin to drift in uneasy sleep, but the sound of booted feet coming into the house roused me. My family met him, and I heard Celwen complaining, heard him tease Iolanthe and tell Lútha to keep us well in line, and then I heard him ask a question that my mother answered in a low voice. It grew still for a moment until my mother said "Girls," and they then were bustling and talking again.

I turned my face towards the wall. Footsteps crossed the loft floor towards me and I snapped my eyes shut, tried to breathe slowly. His knees cracked softly when he crouched beside the mattress and I felt a stir in the air above me, as if his hand hovered over my hair. A short sigh, and with another pop of joints he rose and descended the ladder. I heard my mother's voice, tender with the blessing she spoke over him any time he left us. _Until we are met again, be well, and be watched over._

The door thundered shut and shook the floor beneath me.

It was the first time I could remember that I did not escort him to the village gate and wave him out of sight as he rode away. I swallowed down an uneasy thought, let it become coated with my anger and frustration. I hurled my fleece-stuffed pillow against the further wall.

-o0o-

My mother never had much tolerance for sulking, and even less for idleness, and so I spent the afternoon hoeing between the turnip-rows and scraping clean the cellar floor to ready it for the vegetables we would soon be harvesting. It was a cool task, and damp, and when I finished, my mother had my clean shift warming near the stove and a mug of tea steeping.

"When you are finished you will take supper to the Chieftain's cottage and the smithy," she said, stooping to pull dark loaves from the oven. She slid them from the breadboard to the table and when my head emerged from the neck of my shift she skewered me with a narrowed gaze. "And if I hear of you being anything but perfectly polite, daughter, I will volunteer your laundering services to the entire village until Mettarë."

I felt my eyes stretch wide, and she turned from me, apparently satisfied that I was properly wary of her threat. Indeed I was. Once when Iolanthe was close to my age she had spent the better part of a summer cleaning every chicken coop in the village, at our mother's _volunteering_, and that for less of an offense than nearly braining a neighbor to death on the stable floor. I gulped my tea and hefted the basked of bread and cheese and the kettle of stew, one over each arm, and departed, doing my very best to appear perfectly polite.

Hald the smith was at his forge, pumping the great bellows over white-hot coals, his bare arms bouldered with muscle and pocked with spark-scars. When I approached he picked up his crutch and swung nimbly to meet me. I knew not what I expected to see in his face—dislike, in the very least, or perhaps loathing or betrayal, but instead his mouth was quirking in his beard and his eyes were bright with something that did not look at all like anger. Fain with his habitual delight loped to Hald and rumbled at him, and the smith's great hand fell to fondle the wooly ears.

"I have victuals for you, sir," I said. "Naneth sent stew and loaves, and asks that you might take them."

"My thanks, child," said the smith. "But surely not all this for just the boy and me?"

"I must take some also to the Chieftain's cottage," I said, and for the first time realized that I did not know why. Aragorn had led the company away that morning. I felt Hald's eyes on me and realized I had fallen clumsily silent. "I'm sorry," I muttered, feeling my face grow hot. "And I am sorry, sir..." The words caught sideways in my throat and lodged there, and I had to give a little cough before I could continue. "I am sorry for hurting Halvard."

"Mistress Ivorwen says he will recover fully in a day or two," said Hald. "And though I don't for a moment believe the blame is not to be shared between the two of you, you may go and speak with him, if you like. You may leave the food on the table, and please thank your mother for us."

"I will," I said, and offered a little curtsy. I thought that speaking with Halvard was the last thing in Arda I wished to do, and was shoring back biting words as I walked the path between smithy and house. But when I slipped through the door it was dark within, the figure on the bed beneath heaped blankets unmoving, and I shivered slightly with relief, left my offering on the table, and departed, closing the door softly behind me.

There was a curl of woodsmoke coming from the Chieftain's chimney. I felt a breath of hesitation as I lifted my hand to knock, but before I could a voice called, "Come in, young one."

Lord Elrohir sat with his feet braced wide before the hearth, and across his knees his naked sword lay gleaming red and glistening beneath his singing whetstone. He straightened when I entered, his hands stilling at their work.

"If it pleases you, my lord," I said. "My mother has sent me with bread and stew."

He laid aside sword and stone and rose and met me, slid the kettle-wire off my arm. "It is very kind of your mother to think of me," he said, turning to set the pot on the table. He used his left arm and was careful of the other, his elbow pressing tight against his side, and I recalled the Chieftain's words—_two broken at least_. Discarded on the table was a length of knotted cloth. I set my basket beside the soup-kettle and eyed the wilted sling.

"My sister wore one of those when she broke her collarbone," I heard myself say. Immediately I felt my eyes grow wide—surely pestering the Chieftain's guest did not fall within my mother's consideration of being perfectly polite. But when I looked up to beg his pardon he was smiling, the starfired eyes crinkled with kindness.

"Your sister doubtless did as she ought and wore it until she healed," he said.

I shook my head. "No my lord. She fretted and was cranky and did not care to wear it at all." When he did not frown or look away uninterested I found myself with the courage to go on. "She said that it itched and was a horrible hindrance and kept her from doing what she wished."

He laughed a short warm laugh. "I feel much the same," he said. "It is indeed a hindrance, and makes me cranky as well."

Despite his kindness, I realized Lord Elrohir was troubled. I could see it in his restless hands, in the way he was not dressed for ease or comfort, but for work or riding—or for battle. I could smell the sweetness of freshly-oiled leather and knew that it would be prudent to bid him goodnight and take my leave. But he intrigued me, with his gentle manners and the bridling fire they barely concealed, the way he spoke and expected an answer as few adults did when addressing a child. Not less than these things I knew what awaited me at home—an ever-growing list of chores to keep me out of trouble. I decided that tarrying was a risk I dared.

To mask my procrastination I went to the shelf above the washstand and took down Aragorn's bowl and spoon. I guessed that it had been he who had offered Lord Elrohir the cottage and went on to assume he would not mind the sharing of his dishes. It was hardly fitting for a great Lord of the Elves to scoop up stew with his fingers like a wild man. "Will you be staying long, my lord?"

"I fear not," he said. "I shall leave on the morrow, if my horse is recovered for the ride."

I ladled steaming stew. "Do Elves heal quickly?" I asked. "When I had to have stitches it was ten days before Daernaneth took them out."

When I looked up his mouth was tugging. The thought struck me that perhaps I had been impertinent, or was outwearing my already tenuous welcome. "Forgive me, my lord, I did not mean..."

"Peace, child," he interrupted, his low laugh rolling again. "You shall not offend me, and you are correct. Elves do heal quickly, though sometimes not quite so quickly as I would like."

I considered this, and he seemed content to wait for me to assemble my thoughts. After a pause I ventured, "My lord, may I ask a question?"

"You may ask anything that comes to mind, though it would please me to dispense with the lording."

I was bewildered. "Dispense..."

"If I may use your name, you are welcome to use mine."

This required a moment of pondering, during which he shifted and hitched his sound hip on the table-edge and looked at me expectantly.

"May I ask a question... Elrohir?"

"Yes, Eluned, you may."

"Are you going after the Rangers?"

"That is my intent."

"Elrohir?"

"Yes, Eluned?"

"Did the Chieftain make you stay behind?"

This question brought forth a little sigh from my companion. His long forefinger tapped briefly on the tabletop before he deigned to answer. "He asked it of me, yes."

"Because of your wounds?"

"Yes." He lifted his gaze to meet mine and I saw his eyes had narrowed. "You are an astute little Númenórean," he said dryly. "Your Chieftain asked me to bide here while I mend, and by my ruling I am mended sufficiently to follow the others and offer my aid."

I was starting to feel my shyness evaporate. "I would have gone with them as well," I said, and sank into the other chair with a grumbling huff. "But Ada made me stay. No one ever asks me anything."

Lord Elrohir chuckled and turned and eased into the seat across from me. "Perhaps they shall when you are as old as I," he said. "Do you mind if I eat? I find the aroma of your naneth's stew is about to overcome me."

"I do not mind," I said, "My sister made the stew." He pulled the bowl near, broke off a heel of bread, and began to eat. A thought occurred to me as I remembered Aragorn's voice that morning, unusually sharp—_I'll hear no more of it, brother._ I pressed my knees together and smoothed my kirtle primly over them.

"Elrohir?"

He looked up but did not answer around his mouthful of bread and meat.

"Will the Chieftain be cross when he sees you?"

He swallowed, wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb. "I suspect that he may be, yes. And likely my twin also."

I drew a fingertip along the seam of my skirt, did not meet his eye, and said carefully, "But you will go anyway?"

He did not answer right away and when I looked at him I saw he had straightened in his chair, his arms folded loosely over his chest. He regarded me, his dark brows slightly drawn. "Why, youngling, do I suddenly feel there is no wise answer to that question?"

I felt my belly deflate and my forehead cringe with sheepishness, and knew that here was one who would not be easily maneuvered. I offered him a shy grin. "Perhaps because it is not a wise question?"

He snorted. "Indeed," he said. "Crafty, perhaps, but not wise. Why are you so eager to go chasing after trouble, little Dúnadan? You remind me of another child I knew long ago."

"The Chieftain?" I asked. I knew well of Aragorn's upbringing among the Elves.

"Much longer ago than that," he said. "This child was impatient, and too headstrong by far, and spent many hours at tedious tasks instead of play because he would not obey the wisdom of his elders."

I wrinkled my nose, feeling wryly delighted. "You did not obey?"

"Not as often as I should have. You should learn from my imprudence and do as your adar tells you."

I grinned at him to sweeten what I knew would be blazing impudence, and looked pointedly at the sling of linen on the table. "I think that child grew up and did not learn from his _own_ mistakes."

It seemed I had judged Lord Elrohir well, for he did not darken with disapproval nor scold me for my cheek, but tipped his head back laughing. "Truly," he said. "And a fine bullheaded pair we make, Halbaradiell, though I see you have no small measure of your ada in you as well. You come by it honestly, my friend."

It seemed there was a story lurking there, but before I could press him to explain himself, the voice of my eldest sister came cracking through the open door.

"Eluned! Shame on you, pestering the Chieftain's guest!" Iolanthe paused on the threshold and beckoned me with an impatient hand. "Come away at once, Naneth is fretting after you. You must forgive her, my lord, she is sorely lacking in both manners and sense."

Elrohir rose and bowed deeply towards the door. "Good evening, lady. It is kind of you to come to accompany your sister home. She was offering me conversation while I supped. Is it you I have to thank for the most excellent stew?"

Iolanthe turned an exquisite shade of scarlet and seemed quite unable to speak. Her mouth opened and closed for a time until I took pity on her and said, "Iolanthe made the stew, Elrohir, and worried over it all afternoon before she let me bring it to you."

Iolanthe might have cheerfully wrung my neck for that, but before she could trounce me for my horrendous manners I scooped up the empty basket and darted past her. In the doorway I stopped and turned, spread my skirts in my most elegant curtsy.

"Good evening, my lord," I said, dipping low. "I wish you safety on your bullheaded quest, and luck with the wrath of your elders." I straightened, grinning, and ignoring my sister's hiss of horror I whirled and fled for home. My new friend's rich laugh rolled after me through the deepening dusk.

-o0o-

The day after the Rangers left, my mother woke us early, and by the time I had dressed and scrubbed my face and returned from the privy, our house had become a hive of Dúnedain women. They were rolling out bread dough and stoking the kiln outside by the woodpile and stacking woolen blankets. Grandmother Ivorwen and Fimriel her apprentice heated beeswax over the fire inside and steeped herbs in hot oil, and while the salve rendered they boiled earthen jars to scrape it into. Even Brenia was there, hunched over one end of the table rolling bandages. The others bustled but I saw none passed the young widow without squeezing her arm or hugging her shoulders or brushing the hair away from her cheeks. Off the front step several young women, my eldest sisters among them, unfolded a huge tent on the grass. They wielded brushes and buckets of pungent grease, and when the tent was stretched they began to oil the canvas against rain and rot.

Dírhael my father's grandfather, his hair the color of ash, sat on the front step splicing hemp to repair the tethering ropes. He tugged the hem of my skirt when I passed him.

"You look like you have been drinking vinegar," he said in Sindarin. He was always testing the youngsters' grasp of the Grey Tongue, seeing if he could trick us with some nuance of grammar or syntax, and if we solved his linguistic riddles he would laugh and reward us with morsels of candied peppermint.

I was in a dark mood that morning though, and with a muttered "_Suilad_, Anadar," I tried to brush past.

He caught my belt with a quick hand, towed me down beside him on the step. He handed me the end of his rope and motioned for me to keep it taut while he worked his woven splice.

"Why so sour?" he asked. "It's a beautiful day."

I agreed sullenly that it was indeed beautiful, and leaned my weight against the rope.

"What are we preparing for?" I asked after a moment of watching him work.

He looked at me sideways, his eyes bright beneath rimy brows. "If the Rangers don't return by tomorrow we will send after them with supplies," he said, though he had observed me for a breath or two before answering. "I would have thought you'd have known that."

I frowned. "We don't usually send supplies."

"This is a different sort of errand," he said. "There may be folk driven out of their homes. Refugees." He tugged hard on a strand, nearly yanking it out of my hands, and I tightened my grip and leaned back further. "Tomorrow if we have not had word we will go and make a camp for them to gather at until it is safe to return."

I pondered this. "Why do they live where they are in danger?" I asked. "Why don't they move nearer a village where the Rangers can protect them?"

"There has not been need," he said. "Not for some years. Your sister Iolanthe was a babe when orcs last dared to venture this near to our settlement." He watched my face as he spoke these words, and I struggled to look unconcerned. He was not fooled. "Do not fret, youngling. They are men full-grown. They will guard us well and not wage war unwisely. Hand me that awl."

I did, watching as he began to work the splice down tight. There was a sunken scar between his thumb and forefinger I had never noticed before. "Did an orc do that?"

He glanced down. "Yes," he answered serenely. "I was fortunate he did not cut my thumb off."

"It would be hard to splice without a thumb," I said in agreement, for it seemed the only sensible reply.

He chuckled through his nose. "Indeed it would, and a great many other things."

"Who will go to the camp?" I asked carefully, trying for detachment, but even in my own ears the attempt fell flat. I sounded curious as a magpie and found myself beneath that bright stare once again.

"Not too many, for the grain will need cutting soon. Orlaithe, I would think, and a boy or two for guards. Although I understand our supply of boys is dwindling." His eyebrow wiggled and I felt my face flush.

"Daernaneth said he would recover," I said with a hint of sullenness. I did not bother to suppress a flare of satisfaction that Halvard had not, in fact, been able to go with the men.

"I've no doubt. Boys have hard heads."

The way he said it made me suspect that, in his opinion, boys were not the only ones.

"Eluned, come mind your sisters, they are underfoot," called my mother from inside. I rose to obey but was stopped by my great-grandfather's scarred hand.

"We each have our duties, young one," he said. "And none are more or less important than any other to keep the world in order and the shadows back."

"I know that," I said.

"Good." He bent back over his lap. "Thank you for your help."

-o0o-

"I am going with them in the morning," I whispered. It was so black beneath our blankets that Sive's face was little more than a smear against the deeper dark behind her. Across the room my sisters slept on the big mattress, where we were supposed to be as well, but we had sneaked to the far corner of the loft where we could scheme unnoticed.

"You are crazy and your ada will flay you like a trout."

"He did not say I could not go with the wagon," I reasoned. "He only said I could not go with the Rangers. Besides—" I wriggled down deeper away from the cold. "They will need my help in the relief camp. Only Orlaithe can be spared from harvesting, and Sadoc for a guard, and they will be glad to have another pair of hands."

"I still don't understand why they are going. Why don't they bring the refugees here?"

"Because there are folk all up and down the Loudwater," I said, feeling superior in my knowledge. I did not bother to mention that earlier I had asked my great-grandfather close to the same question. "They need a place to bring the families that is closer than here, and somewhere to tend any wounded they find. Aragorn told Anadar to send a wagon if we had no word for three days."

The next day would be the third, and the cart with its food and supplies and great canvas tent folded up in a bundle as tall as my waist would depart at dawn.

"They will never let you," whispered Sive. "Orlaithe will discover you and she will make you go back."

"She cannot make me go back if they have already arrived by the time I am discovered," I said. "It will be too far."

Sive snorted as softly as she could. I could picture perfectly the wrinkling of her nose. "Why?" she asked.

"Because they will be nearly as far as the river, that's why."

"No, I meant why do you wish to go? You have a good ada and all you ever do is disobey him."

"That's not true," I snarled, loud enough that across the room I heard Lútha sigh in her sleep. Sive poked me under the ribs. "Not true," I said again, so soft I barely heard myself.

"Is too," said Sive, stubborn even in a whisper. "If I had an ada like your ada I would always do exactly what he said."

"Well you don't have!" I hissed. "So you can't understand why."

Almost immediately I felt a throb of remorse, for Sive had fallen silent and rolled away from me. We did not move for long minutes, the breathing of my sisters coming to us steadily in the still air, and then my hand crept and found her elbow. I squeezed it.

"I'm sorry," I breathed.

"I know," she whispered back, and I knew I was forgiven, that she had forgiven me immediately, and my regret throbbed again.

"He needs me," I said after a long silence. "He needs me there so he will remember to be safe and come home. Sometimes…" I found my throat thickening and had to swallow hard before I could continue. "Sometimes I think he must fight so hard and long against the Shadow that he forgets he must come home to us." I was glad for the dark, glad that Sive could not see the track of my tear as it slid into my hairline.

"I do not think he forgets," said Sive. "Iarladh does not forget. He always wants to come home."

If I had not hurt her moments before with biting words, I might have snapped out an answer to this, as well. Iarladh was easy to understand. My knowledge of the Rangers and all they must face told me that he must be valiant. I did not doubt his bravery—if he had been craven, or had no mastery of sword or bow, or no stomach for killing, then he would not have worn the gray cloak. Aragorn would not have had him. Iarladh would have been left with all honor to till and herd and raise children in peace. He was a Ranger, and I knew that meant he had to be made of springing steel beneath his gentle guise. Even so he was a contented man. Happy to follow his leader, but just as happy to come home again and work the fields.

But my father was different, different than Iarladh or cheerful Caradoc or old Coru who had served Arathorn the Chieftain's father. Ada loved our Dúnedain people, neighbors and kinsman. He loved Iolanthe and Lútha and Celwen and Lossiel, and me who troubled him the worst of us all, loved us with all the fierceness and gentleness of his mighty heart. He loved my mother, she his captain and sweetheart and beloved friend.

But I knew the truth. I knew that all of us he would lay aside, if ever it came to such. All his love for us would not keep him from following his liege, even into darkness, even to death.

And I might have hated Aragorn for it, for holding my father's fealty so perfectly. I might have hated him but for two reasons: because I knew the Chieftain would not in all his life squander such allegiance, and because I was my father's daughter and I was as loyal as he.

"I must go," I breathed in air grown heavy with sudden understanding. "I must, because I will not have him forever."

There was a long silence, so long I began to think that Sive had fallen asleep. I felt a creeping loneliness, a hollow in my chest slowly whittling wider, and when I thought I could bear it no longer and was reaching to shake her awake, if only for her company, her whisper huffed against my ear.

"We're going to be in so much trouble."

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><p><em>Daernaneth—grandmother <em>

_Anadar—great-grandfather (literally, long-father)_

_Suilad—greetings_

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><p><em>Thank you so much for reading, and for all the lovely, encouraging reviews, favorites, and follows!<em>


	4. Ready to Go Rangering

_A/N: Cairistiona, Linda Hoyland, and Levade. Wonderful betas, wonderful writers. Go read their stuff._

_All recognizable elements (admittedly not many in this chapter-bear with me, beloved characters are soon to reappear) belong to J.R.R. Tolkien_.

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><p>IV<p>

_Ready To Go Rangering_

In the clinging mist before dawn Sive and I slipped on our harvesting clothes: woolen hose and tunics of oiled canvas over heavy linen shirts, and leather boots handed and handed down from cousins or sisters whose oft-replaced soles had seen many miles through mucky fields. Over my ensemble I tied my cloak of grey lambswool and drew up the hood. Sive donned a doeskin jerkin that had once been Iarladh's and was much too big for her, but she belted it gamely with a girth of leather through which she thrust a gleaming knife. For a moment I envied her; even though her skinny frame was swallowed whole she had the look of someone prepared to cover rugged country.

My pack I had prepared for days, ever since my scheme had first blossomed in my mind. We hurried to the eastern edge of the village where a great elm stooped low over the broken border-wall. Into its bole I had stuffed my supplies and I scrambled atop the stone and retrieved it, the single haversack with a blanket thrust through the shoulder-straps. Inside was flint and steel, bread and smoked meat, a tiny earthen jar of wound-salve, a length of rope, a box of peat moss for tinder, and a spare shirt for each of us. I had left behind the soap, for we were Rangers now and bathing was negligible. I had also in a fit of uneasiness stuffed a fistful of pipeweed into a little leather pouch and packed it carefully into the bottom of the haversack, to soothe any irascible tempers we would inevitably encounter.

Lastly from the tree-hole I pulled my final treasure, a plain sheath dyed dark with walnut. Nestled safe in oiled fleece within it was a dagger of my father's, longer than my forearm. I drew it halfway to admire the glow of it, the way it seemed to gather dim daybreak into its steel. I bent my head and breathed on its blade to see the fog collect and wipe away beneath my thumb. I smiled as I sheathed it again and buckled it beside my hip. I too was ready to go Rangering.

As we had the morning of the Rangers' return, we slipped through the underbrush past the sentry. In his defense, he was charged with watching outwards for dangers that approached the settlement and not for absconders from within it; even so I suspected my father would have a word or two for the boy if ever he found out how easily we evaded detection. When we were past we eased back into sight of the path and trotted through the trees as swiftly as we dared. Orlaithe and Sadoc had left before the moon had set, some hours before dawn. But they would be slow, hampered by the laden cart. If we kept a quick pace we would overtake them, and could follow unseen along the path towards the river.

We spoke little as the sun appeared, trekking as quickly as we could. My intent was to waylay the wagon and follow it in secret, and when the sun was high we were rewarded by the creak of wheels and the soft chime of harness-buckles ahead of us. As we crept closer I heard the voice of Orlaithe, husky with her usual dry good cheer, and Sadoc answering solemnly. They rolled into view around a bend in the track ahead of us.

Sadoc was a sturdy youth, nearing the age when he would give his oath as a Ranger, as his brother Caradoc had done before him. I had heard my father speak of him at the table one night, of his stout heart and level head. _Nearly a man,_ Ada had said, _ready for the grey cloak, _and theChieftain had answered, _It is sons like him who give me hope_.

Orlaithe was my mother's cousin, tall as a man, and all the children in the village admired her, for she could draw a full-weighted longbow, and once at the midsummer games had outshot even old Coru at a hundred paces. She had a daughter, married and settled somewhere to the north. Her husband I had heard no one speak of, but Orlaithe sometimes pinned her cloak with the rayed star and I knew it likely that she, like so many others, was the widow of a Ranger. She was gruff and cheerful and a little frightening, but I liked her.

All day my scheme worked beautifully. We followed them for perhaps eight or nine miles, keeping well back, although the sound of them never faded. We had given up breaking a way through the undergrowth and walked instead along the path, following the wagon-tracks. In the mud nearly-dried I could see the marks of horses where the Rangers had passed days earlier. Sive and I could neither talk nor laugh for fear of discovery, and so I entertained myself by pretending to stalk them, imagining Morien and her heavy feet pressing into the loam, and there, skirting a standing puddle, the smaller hooves of Sael. At one point we passed a place where the men had stopped. Interspersed with the horse-prints were the marks of many boots. I crouched to trace the instep of one perfect print in the damp sand and wondered who it belonged to. Caradoc, I thought, or perhaps short, stocky Feridir.

It was idle tracking, more than half-fanciful, but a mile or so on I saw something that pricked my attention in earnest. Hoofprints, slimmer than the others, and pressed more shallowly. Even with my rudimentary woodcraft I could see that they were fresh. After a hundred yards or so they veered suddenly off the side of the path and into the trees. I paused for a moment, curious and half-tempted to follow them. But what I saw next made me draw up short.

In the soft damp dirt beneath an overhanging elm was a wolf-print the size of my father's mighty hand.

I nearly squeaked at the sight of it. Sive was a few steps behind me and before she drew close I dragged my foot through the dirt. I stomped the track away beneath my heel and turned to her, smiling much too brightly. Disquiet was uncoiling like a serpent in my gut.

"You should have seen the size of that spider," I said, my voice shrill.

Sive stopped and observed me for a moment with her dark brows drawn together in a scowl.

"I'm surprised you didn't try to stab it to death," she muttered as she began again to walk.

Slowly the trees thinned into low brushy hills. We were both beginning to tire, for we had slept little in our excitement the night before, and while the wagon traveled the easy path we were now often obliged to fade from it and clamber through the rocks to avoid being spotted by a chance look back. Somewhere along the way Sive had turned her ankle and was shuffling along with a dark look on her thin face. We had also found the wind when we left the tree-cover and it was no sweet late-summer breeze, but a cold nipping northern that pried down our collars and numbed our fingers and nose-tips.

It was the wind perhaps that kept us from hearing the heavy loping footsteps until I was struck suddenly from behind and knocked to the ground, the breath driven out of me in a great gust. As I scrabbled for my dagger and kicked at my attacker I heard Sive yell and then begin to laugh. I rolled and found my face being bathed foully by an enormous red tongue.

"Fain!" I hissed, grabbing his ruff to push him away and pull myself sitting. He knocked me back again in his exuberance and stood over me, reeking of manure and damp. It was not often I was flat while he stood and I had a fleeting thought of the impossible size of him. This was followed by a brief prayer of thanks that my dog was so good-natured. He could have dragged down a horse if his inclinations were more fearsome.

"You are supposed to be tied up!" I told him fiercely. "You will give us away!"

He made an affectionate sound deep in his chest as he usually did whenever I took a tone with him, and tried to lick my mouth again. I shoved him hard and scrambled to my feet. There was a length of broken rope hanging from his collar.

"You are a bad dog," I said. He swung his heavy tail and grinned at me.

"I am glad he has come," said Sive. "He is frightening, if you do not know him well." She scratched his back where he liked it best and then drew back and sniffed her fingers, crinkling her nose. "He needs a bath, though."

"He will give us away with his stench," I growled as I rummaged in my pack and found my coiled rope. Fain eyed me but did not flee when I snatched his collar and tied him. He was much stronger than me and could have easily pulled away, if he had wished, but he was happy to be with us and my father had trained him well to yield to leading. He looked at me with such adoration in his bright black eyes that my displeasure with him fled. I scrubbed beneath his chin where he was perpetually itchy.

"Be quiet," I told him, and hefted my pack. When we began to walk again he paced alongside me, the long darker guard-hairs along his back and shoulders brushing my flank. He was so tall I could rest my hand on his neck with a bend in my elbow. I realized I too was glad he had come.

A few minutes later Fain turned, bracing his paws against my tugging. His curled tail swayed gently and his ears swept back against his head in welcome. Despite his lack of concern I felt my pulse rise wildly in my throat. I nearly leapt out of my skin when Fain gave a short bark, and a red-headed boy tumbled with a curse out of the undergrowth.

"Halvard!" Sive gasped. "You're supposed to be home in bed!"

I was so astonished that Fain pulled easily through my fingers, trotted to Halvard where he sprawled in the path, and began to lick his ear.

"Gerroff," said Halvard, fending with one hand. The other pressed into his forehead over eyes pinched tightly shut. I knew his head was pounding from the knock I had given it, but I could not summon sympathy enough to keep from stalking towards him with my own hands fisted at my sides.

"How did you find us?" I demanded.

Halvard peered up at me through slitted eyelids. His hair tumbled in wooly sprigs over his bracing hand and for a moment he looked too sick to answer. He was the color of a frog's belly beneath his constellating freckles.

"You've been tramping straight along the road," he said, his weak voice scornful. "A blind man could have followed you."

I looked closer at Fain's trailing rope. "You cut my dog loose, didn't you. So he would lead you to us!"

Halvard had the grace to look a little guilty. "I would have found you anyway," he muttered. "You left a trail like a troll."

I jabbed a rigid finger towards the west. "Go home."

Halvard pushed himself up, his hands bracing on bony knees, and when his back straightened I saw a gloss of sweat above his lip. I realized that over the summer he had grown taller than me. I did not like having to tilt my chin to meet his eye.

"You two are coming back with me," he said. His voice was thin as a thread but I could hear the determination in it. "You'll have everyone in an uproar, running off like this, and with orcs on the hunt. You should thank me for dragging you home before your anadar sends out the hounds."

"We're not going anywhere with you," I said. "Are we, Sive."

Sive honestly seemed to consider it for a moment, which annoyed me enough that I thumped her. She rubbed her arm and looked apologetically at Halvard and opened her mouth to speak. "I think—"

The wolf-voice cut her short. It came ringing on the cold wind and was so close it slid beneath my skin and made my scalp prickle.

An answering snarl rattled in Fain's throat. It was far from the friendly sounds I was used to hearing from him. He was hackled like a boar and looked more fearsome than I had ever seen him. He stared into the low hills. Sive pressed wide-eyed against Halvard's side and he slipped his arm around her shoulders. A long howl rolled again, brushing the hairs on the back of my neck, and for a brief bizarre moment I considered joining her beneath his other arm. I looked ahead and saw Orlaithe and Sadoc standing rigid, the carthorse beside them shifting and staring with its heavy head thrown high.

Then the great wolf burst from the juniper and it was more terrible than anything I had battled in my darkest dreams, gaunt and pale and all but hairless, tendons stretching and sunken between the great muscles of shoulders and loins. It leapt for the scattering carthorse and Orlaithe, tall and fair and fearless, Orlaithe as fierce as a Ranger, foolish, bold Orlaithe, stepped to defend the horse and its burden and the warg—for surely no mere wolf was as enormous, as profanely unafraid—closed its impossible jaws around her middle as if it were a hound and she a soup-bone. I could hear the crunch of ribs and the rend of flesh from where we stood and even as she died Orlaithe drove her blade into the sinewy neck and I could watch no longer, for Sive had begun to scream my name.

And not at the sight of Orlaithe in her last battle. Sive was looking away into the hills and I followed her gaze and saw the others coming, a pair as vast and single-minded as the first that bounded over the rocks, coming stride upon stride in impossible leaps, near enough now I could see the sinew the flat, hungry light in their pale eyes.

Then Halvard drove his palm hard between my shoulder blades.

"Run, you fool, don't just stand there!" he cried, pulling Sive behind him. He had her knife in his hand and he shoved me again, pushing Sive after me, and I needed no further bidding. I snatched Sive's wrist and ran. I ran until my chest shot through with searing pain and my lungs burned like bellows and my legs felt weak as winter stalks. When Sive tripped and faltered I wrenched her upright and hauled her after me. She was sobbing, crying words I did not take the time to listen to, until finally my body told me I would have to slow or suffer revolt. Sive's words became clearer, even through her tears and shuddering cries—_a dream, just a dream, oh please, only a dream_. Over and again she said it, until it seemed that she begged, and then I did something I immediately hated myself for.

I slapped my friend, hard enough that her head snapped back. "Be quiet!" I said savagely. "Or I will leave you for them!"

She stared at me through eyes grown huge with sudden shock and pain, her hand hovering alongside her cheekbone where already I could see my fingermarks rising red on her pale skin. She whimpered once, and then the grating memory of what we had just witnessed must have flooded behind her eyes, because she sank to her knees in the grass and fell forward and began to weep, her fingernails scraping into the dirt.

"It killed her!" she cried. "It killed Orlaithe and we left Sadoc and Halvard and it likely killed them too, and we should have never left home, oh Eluned, why did we leave home? We will die out here!"

"Be quiet," I said again, but with less malice, for I could feel Sive's panic spreading like poison in my belly. "Sive, please be quiet so I can think!" I cast myself down beside her, put my arm over her thin back. "Please, Sive, I'm sorry, I should not have struck you, please, we must be silent or we will draw them to us!" I looked around wildly, at low brushy hills and bare rock, away to the distant dark line of the wood. Beyond it over leagues we had already traveled lay home and safety. But we had run east and north, further away from where we should be, and now unspeakable terror barred our way. I realized Fain was not with us and my stomach twisted. He weighed as much as slender man and could outrun a hare, but he was no match for the malevolent giants we had seen, those hellhounds with their lifeless eyes. He would be torn down like a lamb. Like Orlaithe.

I found myself unable to conjure coherent thought, beyond the irrational desire to whistle for Fain, call out to him on the chanting wind.

Then it came to us again, that deadly hunting-call, and away to the south an answering voice like the knell of an unholy bell.

"We must keep running," I whispered, tugging Sive to her feet. I remembered my dagger and drew it, but as we began to run again it hampered me and I floundered for the sheath at my hip, fumbled the blade into it. I tried to angle west, west towards the village, but the rocks and the lay of the hills and the fell voices behind us seemed to herd us north, and more alarmingly, east. East where the Bruinen lay, where our folk were under attack.

East towards the Rangers. I felt a feeble flare of hope.

But we could not run forever. Sive's twisted ankle was swelling in her boot and weariness was beginning to shadow her eyes. I do not know how far we had gone when she buckled against a low rock and would not go on. I was shamefully relieved; her weakness allowed for my own respite, one I sorely needed. I could not have gone much further myself.

It was there the hunters found us. The wind changed and my nostrils filled with the cloy of decay and another strange, stale odor, like the musk of a stoat. The skin along my spine began to shift and tingle. I turned to see them as they slipped over the crest of a hill, heads slung low between slated shoulder blades. I fumbled for my dagger, yanked it free with a soft rasp. Sive whimpered, but she scrambled to her feet and came and stood beside me. She had found a pair of jagged stones and she stood with her shoulder against my arm and her feet set wide. She was trembling. I could see the silent moving of her lips from the corner of my eye.

The wargs slunk closer. They were near enough now that I could see the flat yellow eyes, the weeping sores and abscesses where limbs met bodies, the shredding scars across their snouts and down their rolling shoulders. I could see the loll of black tongues behind broken, rotting teeth. I felt Sive hitch her arm back to throw and my clutching fingers on my dagger's hilt grew slick.

The leaner one broke into a slinking lope. Sive's first rock flew wide.

The gaunt she-wolf coiled to cross the final yards and I heard the thunder of my heart like hoofbeats in my chest, felt a name on my lips like a plea.

_Elbereth…_

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><p><em>Thank you so much for reading, and especially thank you to guest reviewers whose comments I can't reply to. I appreciate you guys so much!<em>


	5. A Regiment of Half-Grown Númenóreans

_A/N: Three remarkably generous and talented writers helped me heave this thing off the ground: Cairistiona, Linda Hoyland, and Levade. They have lots of really, really good stories you should go read and upon which you should lavish praise._

_I am fractionally less fluent in Sindarin than I am in Crow Indian (in which I can accuse someone of stealing horses and tell you that Crow Agency is in_ that_ direction) so there's an excellent chance any attempted use of Tolkien's languages will be awkward at best, and downright embarrassing at worst. Please squawk if you spot glaring errors._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>V<p>

_A Regiment of Half-grown Númenóreans_

The great wolf hesitated. It glanced to the left, flat nostrils flaring, and Sive bounced her second rock off the side of its face. It was a good hit, but thrown by a thin arm, and the warg dragged a forepaw over the place and turned back to us with a snarl. The thundering grew louder. With a start I realized it was not coming from my chest but from off to the side, a thunder of swift-approaching hooves, and then with a wet sound of impact an arrow erupted from the creature's hateful eye.

The arrow drove the warg from its course but did not kill it. It rolled and writhed, pawing at its ruined socket, grinding its face into the ground like a mad thing. We scrambled away from it; it was thrashing like a dying snake and we would be caught in the throes. Another arrow slapped into its skull and it collapsed and did not rise again.

But there was another still living, and when I could tear my eyes from the dying warg I saw its mate circling to the left. The beast was wary but not cowed, but its mistake was in the wavering, for as it skulked and snarled Elrohir on his dark horse hauled his bowstring back a final time and shot the thing through its corded throat.

The bow fell from his grasp and clattered on a stone. I heard a curse in Elvish as he sagged in the saddle, clamping his arm tight against his side. He allowed himself no more than a moment of respite before he straightened and spun his horse and came to us. I could summon no greeting as he stepped from the near-side and closed the final distance with swift strides. Wordlessly he took my dagger from my dangling hand and went to the first beast and stamped a foot down on its jaw and sawed through its throat. He looked back at the second and seemed satisfied to see it shuddering and scrabbling feebly as it died a death less kind. Only then did he turn to us.

Sive shifted a little closer against my side. Elrohir bore bloody stains on his abdomen and down the fronts of his thighs. His sleeves were clinging darkly to the elbows and I wondered vaguely how much of it was his.

"Are either of you harmed?" Elrohir asked. He glanced at his empty hand and wiped it on the leg of his breeches. It left a smear of brighter blood beneath the hem of his jerkin and his forearms were bloody and his chest and throat spattered and…

"Answer me, children," he commanded. I realized I had been staring slack-jawed.

"No, my lord," Sive said, surprising me. She regarded Lord Elrohir with frightened eyes, but went on to say, "We are not hurt. Except… Eluned cut her hand."

I looked down and saw Sive spoke the truth. I had not felt it in the rush and the panic but now it was beginning to burn. I made a fist against the sting.

Callused fingers circled my wrist, gently pried my hand open. I had slit the web of skin between thumb and forefinger when I had fumbled the blade back into its sheath, but the cut was shallow. Already the blood was sticky and dark.

"Will it keep until we are away to safer places?" Elrohir asked. I nodded. "Then we must go." He strode to where his bow lay and bent to retrieve it. He laid an arrow to it and led his horse back the way we had come. He did not need to beckon us to follow—we scurried after him like ducklings.

"We left Halvard," I said as I raced to catch up with him. "We left him when the wolves came, and Fain, and it killed Orlaithe…" A sob rose in my throat. "…and Sadoc. We do not know what became of Sadoc."

"Master Halvard is waiting for us," said Elrohir. "Quickly, now." He lengthened his stride and we had to hurry or be left behind. It did not take him long to notice Sive's hitching limp or her crippling weariness; he paused long enough to leg her onto his horse and direct her to his waterflask where it hung behind the cantle. I wanted to demand how he had found us, how he had found Halvard. I wanted to ask what had happened to Sadoc and if there were more wolves. I wanted to know if he had seen Fain. But I also knew he would not take the time to answer me, not with his keen eyes darting and his bow set to loose. I held my tongue and concerted my dwindling strength on keeping up.

We retraced a mile, maybe two, though it seemed much further. A traitorous part of me wanted to ask if I could climb behind Sive and ride, but my pride told it viciously to be silent. Elrohir was injured and he walked, had defended us with broken ribs. I could bear my own weight.

After a time Elrohir slowed and whistled a wren-song. He hesitated suddenly, straining to hear, and I would have trudged past him had he not caught my shoulder and levered me back. Then came the answering trill from off to the left, and Elrohir released me. We followed him into a shallow ravine between two grassy hills.

Halvard was sitting with his back to a stone and his forehead resting on his drawn-up knees. He looked up as we approached and I saw that he was freckled much too darkly, that his face and his hands and the front of his shirt were spattered with blood. He looked weary, so weary I did not know if he could sit up, but straighten he did. He had been weeping. He did not bother to conceal it.

Elrohir handed me his horse's rein. He went to Halvard and crouched in front of him, tipped his chin, looked intently into his eyes. He turned Halvard's face into the westering sun and examined his eyes again, and seemingly satisfied, clapped him lightly on the shoulder.

"Can you walk?" he asked, and Halvard nodded slowly and pushed against the stone. His knees were shaking. Elrohir rose with him but did not assist. When both were standing, Elrohir laid a hand on red curls and said in Elvish, "Brave boy."

On we went. Every so often Halvard would stumble and press the heel of his hand between his eyes, his face grey with pallor. Elrohir seemed to notice when this happened without having to look back; his pace would slow until Halvard had mastered himself, and only then did it quicken again. Halvard had lost Sive's knife but now he carried another, longer and slimmer, the blade subtly curved and marked with bright runes. He walked in the rear of our little column and between waves of suffering his eyes were quick, watching behind us and off to the sides. I fell back and he drew alongside me wordlessly.

"Sadoc…" I began to say, but his jaw tightened until the tendons showed and I did not press him further. The front of his tunic was stiff with blood.

"They are still lying there," he said after a long silence. His voice grated somewhere down in his throat. "We had not the time…" He swallowed hard, his eyes falling shut for a breath or two. "Lord Elrohir came and drove the wolves away but we could not stay to bury them." He gave a horrible little choke of a laugh. "They even killed the horse."

I had no answer for this, no way to fathom what we had seen nor what had come to pass after we had fled. I did not want to think of it. I said instead, "How did he find us?"

Our guide moved silently in the lead, his horse following unbidden. We were yards behind him but I saw his head turn at my words, and before Halvard could answer Elrohir said over his shoulder, "Stay close and save your breath for walking."

He led us west towards home. Home, where only that morning I had abandoned with pleasure, pleasure at my cleverness and the adventure we would find. Now I could not remember why I had wished to come at all. I wanted to be home beside the fire squabbling with Lútha or playing with Celwen and her tiny carven horses or even working at the multitude of duties I usually found so distasteful. In that hour, trudging behind Lord Elrohir's horse through the cutting wind, I would have happily traded all the grand adventures in the world for a stool in front of the hateful loom.

We traversed the rocky country quickly, for it seemed Elrohir knew the easiest paths even in the mustering dusk. He kept to the creases and ravines between the hills, never letting us be seen against the skyline. At length the trees thickened again into forest, and when we were deeply into it Elrohir stopped at the base of a great spreading oak. He reached for Sive and lowered her carefully from his horse and steadied her until she found her balance. Halvard and I he beckoned with two fingers. When we scurried closer he said in a low voice, "I must leave a token for the Rangers to find and it will be most easily discovered on the trail, but I dare not bring you with me. I will return as quickly as I can. Stay still and be silent, and listen for danger, and if any threat comes you must get off the ground." He gripped Halvard's shoulder. "You will have to help the little one, if it comes to that. She has no strength in her ankle to climb." Halvard nodded. Elrohir turned to me.

"Halvard is captain while I am gone," he said firmly. "You will do as he bids and not dispute him, do you understand?"

Days before, I might have sneered. Hours before, a protest might have leapt to my tongue. But Elrohir's bright eyes lanced me and I felt my spirit tremble for a scant second and then found my will obedient to his.

"Yes, sir," I said meekly.

He nodded and stepped into his stirrup. I saw him wince as he settled. "Your wound…" I began to say.

He flashed a fleeting grin beneath serious eyes. "Make no sounds," he whispered, and wheeled his horse with a brush of his heel and vanished into the fading light.

-o0o-

We huddled beneath the oak-limbs, our backs against the knotty trunk. Sive began to shiver, her teeth rattling, and Halvard took off his cloak and helped her tie it on over Iarladh's jerkin. It made her look like an overstuffed scarecrow, all bulky chest and spindly legs, but soon her body ceased its shaking. In mere minutes Halvard's resumed it, although he hid it better than she had. It was cold enough that my fingers stiffened even when I thrust them into my armpits. The air was blue with twilight and the wind strummed softly through the trees, and every hiss and moan it made caused me to jump. Every owl-call, every thrumming nightjar, the soft chittering of day creatures settling and night creatures rousing—each of these was a threat that nearly drove me scrambling up into the foliage. In the poor light we could see perhaps ten yards before the trees and heavy brush screened us, and it seemed that just beyond the sight of our little clearing the wood was filled with sinister sounds.

Halvard rested the curved knife across his lap. He scraped his thumb on the blade near the handle.

"Where did you get that?" I whispered.

His eyes flew to the side, as if my breach of our enforced silence would bring foul things winging down on us. When none appeared, he answered, "Lord Elrohir lent it to me."

I felt a flare of irritation. "I lent him mine," I whispered. "He needed it to slay a wolf. Cut its throat through like butter." I sliced my finger across my windpipe. When Halvard did not demonstrate the appropriate amount of admiration, I rallied and continued. "He shot it in the eye first, though. Clean as a whistle. Right when it was about to eat me and Sive."

I was close enough that I could feel when he went rigid, his head coming up with a snap. He turned to me, his eyes gleaming in the dark. "The others were not so lucky as you," he said softly. It were as if he wished to be angry with me but could not summon the strength. His hands lay open upon his folded knees. "I could not stop the bleeding," he whispered, and I knew that he spoke more to himself than to me. "Nor Lord Elrohir. We tried, but we could not, and he was begging us to let him die. He begged me not to save him."

I did not know what to say to this.

"You should not have left home, Eluned," he said. "None of us should have. There is danger coming, worse than what the Rangers thought. Else Lord Elrohir would not be driving us so swiftly. The orcs have come further than they've dared for many years, and the wolves with them."

He glanced at Sive; she was curled up beside him asleep like a kitten, her head pillowed on his thigh. So small she looked beneath Halvard's cloak that I thought of Celwen, and that made me think of Lossiel and how she still tried to nurse the collar of my nightdress in her sleep, which made me think of my mother and the babe she carried, which caused a slow seep of anxiety. She would be sick with worry, and Halvard's father as well. And my own….

I did not want to consider what I would face when he got his hands on me again.

Even so, the thought of retribution was less frightening than the darkness that closed around us. Less frightening than the thought of the Rangers facing not a rabble of over-bold raiders, but an army of goblins down from the Hithaeglir, driven by some darker intent. Still...

"Adar and the Chieftain will stop them," I whispered. "They will not come this far into the Angle. The Rangers will not let them."

"They cannot guard every mile of the river, nor every crossing," he whispered back. "They are stretched too thin." This he said without superiority. He said it like a man might, not a boy flaunting knowledge.

Even so, I felt a gust of anger. "What would you know?" I hissed. "You are not one of them, and neither is your father!"

It was a cruel jab, one that had worked in the past to rouse him to anger. This time he only let his head loll back against the tree. "I know he is not," he said wearily. His eyes fell heavily shut. "I am glad that he is safely away. I am glad his days of fighting orcs are over." He took a deep breath and beside him Sive stirred and nuzzled closer but did not wake. I turned to see his face in the moonlight, but where I expected to see the mockery we so often goaded each other with, I saw only sorrow.

I fell silent after that, and oddly I was tempted to fold my arms and sulk. The old Halvard was easier to fathom. He was easy to provoke and easy to outwit. This new Halvard perplexed me. I think I would have been less fearful in that hour if my long-time rival had behaved as he always did— insulting me and acting smug and losing his temper. I did not know what to do with a Halvard who seemed suddenly too old for me to understand.

But exhaustion crept in and tugged at my eyelids, in spite of the wind and the chill and my gnawing annoyance. It was too cold to stay angry and so I scooted as close as I could without seeming pitiful, and after a time I lost the battle to keep my eyes open. My head lolled against his bony shoulder and for a while I slept.

Halvard's stirring woke me from a disquieting dream, one I could not remember seconds later, but the fog of it lay heavily on my spirit all the same. The moon had traveled higher; I had slept for perhaps two hours. I realized how close I was to him and shoved away with a shudder, but he did not seem to notice. He stood, peering into the night. When I started to ask what he saw, he silenced me with a slice of his hand.

Sive rolled and sat up, her eyes huge and luminous.

Then came the wren-song, a rill of notes, and Halvard answered them perfectly. So light were the footfalls of Elrohir's horse that I did not hear them until the rider emerged from the shadows a few yards away. Elrohir's bow was slung unstrung across his back, and I felt an ease beneath my ribs as he drew near and halted just beyond the eaves of the oak. He stepped down and yanked loose both billets. He let the saddle fall in a heap on the grass without bothering to hook the girths back into their keepers, and slapped the blankets sweaty-side up over it. With his left hand he thumbed loose the throatlatch, peeled the bridle from his horse's head, and tossed it beside the mounded saddle.

"Don't wander far or you might get eaten," he said in Elvish. The horse lipped the top of his leg affectionately and then dropped its head contentedly to graze. Elrohir bent to his saddle and tugged loose a satchel and his waterskin, and with these in hand he joined us. Halvard and I were still standing at the base of the oak and Elrohir nudged his way between us, turned, sank cross-legged, and tipped his head back against the trunk.

"Sit and eat with me, _tithen maethyr_," he said. "I am too weary to look up at you all night." He pulled a bundle from his bag and unwrapped it and the faint smell of sweet bread tugged me down beside him. He broke the heel off the loaf and handed it to Sive, split what remained in three smaller pieces. He handed Halvard and I each one. "Humble fare, I fear, and less than plentiful." He bumped my arm with his elbow. "What I would give for a bowlful of your sister's stew."

The sound of a full voice after what seemed hours of whispering was as heartening as a warm light in a window. I bit off my first mouthful and realized it had been nearly a full day since I had last eaten; I had to work hard not to devour the rest with snarls of enthusiasm, like Fain over a hunk of gristle…

I whirled to Elrohir. "Have you seen Fain?" I asked, the bread in my mouth tasting suddenly of ash.

Puzzlement flitted across his face. "Fain…?"

"He's about this tall, and white, and his hair is curly like a goat's…"

"Ah," said Elrohir, smiling slightly. He tipped his head in sympathy. "I am sorry, Eluned, I have not." I felt my face contort with dismay and he put out his hand and squeezed my elbow. "But neither have I seen him slain," he said. "And hounds have a way of hunting you down if they happen to stray. I would not fear for him, if I were you."

All was quiet for a while, but for the soft sounds of chewing and the occasional swallow. Elrohir passed around the waterskin, offering it to Sive first. When she had finished she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and said to Elrohir, "You have broken ribs."

"And you have a twisted ankle," he said. "And Halvard has a lingering concussion, and Eluned a sliced-open hand. A regular company of convalescents, are we."

I did not point out that, when grouped with broken ribs and concussions, a sliced hand seemed trivial at best.

"Why are you here if your ribs are broken?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be mending?"

Elrohir glanced at me. "I see now why the two of you are friends," he said wryly. "You are both equally meddlesome." He turned back to Sive. "Yes, I should be. And you should be home sleeping safely in your beds. But none of us are where we ought to be, and we shall have to make the best of it. And try to avoid any more turned ankles or sliced hands. Or concussions," he added, casting me a level look.

"Have the Rangers passed this way?" asked Halvard.

Elrohir took back the waterskin from him and stoppered it. "They may have," he said. "I could not tell well in the dark. They have not been on the main path. I intended to have caught them by now, but I came across the warg-tracks yesterday evening. I hunted them for near a full day before they caught scent of the wagon."

Halvard's head drooped low over his lap. He was silent for a long moment, until Elrohir sighed and levered himself across the space between them. He settled a hand on each of Halvard's knees.

"You listen to me, son of Hald," Elrohir said. "You did a grown man's work today, and did it well. But you must listen." He shook Halvard's knees lightly and the boy looked up at him. "We cannot win every battle we fight," Elrohir continued, his voice gentle, but within it I could detect a slender thread of steel. "And we cannot save each one who fights with us. It is folly to shoulder that burden, _gwadorion-nin_. It will surely bring you to madness, should you try."

"You saved Eluned and me," said Sive to Halvard. "You distracted the wolves so we could run."

"And you and Eluned faced them down until I could come to kill them," Elrohir told her. "Faced them with no more than a dagger and a stone. You are valiant little Dúnedain, each of you, and when your various parents and keepers finish skinning you alive, I suspect they shall be very proud of your bravery." He patted Halvard on the side of his head. "I shall make sure they hear of it."

He rose then. "I wish we could start a fire and beat back the chill, but we should be wise instead of comfortable. If you sit close together you will warm one another well enough."

Halvard scrambled to his feet. "I can take first watch," he said.

"You will sleep," Elrohir said firmly. "If my command on this detachment is to be a regiment of half-grown Númenóreans, they will at least be well-rested. And obedient," he added when Halvard began to protest, "or I will have you running rings around this tree until you feel more compliant, concussion or no." Elrohir shouldered his bow. "I will wake you when I need reprieve."

"What about me?" I said. "I can stand watch too."

"So can I," said Sive, pushing to her feet. She stood as squarely as she could and tipped her chin up.

"Tomorrow Halvard and I will teach you the signals," said Elrohir. "And if by some misfortune I have not delivered you home by tomorrow night, we will split the watch amongst us. But tonight you will sleep." He fingered at his throat and when his cloak came loose he bundled it and tossed it to me.

"Keep each other warm," he said, his voice lilting slightly with what might have been amusement. "And in the morning I shall make soldiers out of you."

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><p><em>Hithaeglir—Sindarin name for the Misty Mountains<em>

_Tithen maethyr—little warriors_

_Gwadorion-nin—son of my sworn brother_

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><p><em>Thank you so much for reading! <em>


	6. We Must Look After Each Other

_A/N: I have herculean betas; go read their stories and tell them I sent you._

_Disclaim, disclaim._

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><p>VI<br>_We Must Look After Each Other_

Despite my exhaustion I could find only troubled sleep; my dreams, though not frightening, woke me again and again in a mist of uneasiness. I dreamt I entered my father's house to find it empty, Celwen's wooden horses strewn before the cold hearth, Lútha's darning basket tipped and trailing yarn the length of the room. The back door sagged on one hinge and through it I could hear Fain barking, though when I tried to look out and find him, he was nowhere to be seen.

This changed. I saw my father in a round room of stone, standing cross-armed before a narrow door, straight and stern as a sentinel. His face was grey with weariness and creased with an anxiety so deep it seemed nearer to anger. There was a noise like a rush of fire caught in a consuming wind, and the dull sound of a body hitting the floor, and my father snarled an oath and leapt forward with his hands reaching out…

Again it changed, and in my dream my sight grew dim, and my face and feet were cold. A figure came near and stooped and I felt a press on my hair, and with it, an invasion of peace. I slipped away and dreamed no more and did not wake until the sun began to warm me.

"Rise, little Dúnedain," came Elrohir's voice, ringing with cheerfulness. "Come and take the edge off your hunger and your cold, for what I did not dare by night is no concern in daylight."

I sat up blinking and saw that he had kindled a small merry fire; stretched beside it was the heartening sight of a plump, glossy hare. Elrohir sat cross-legged and was skinning a second, his jerkin cast off and set aside. The blood that painted it—Sadoc's blood, I realized with a surge of queasiness—had not soaked through the leather to his fine linen shirt, but beneath the ribs on his right side his own wound had seeped into a dark stain larger than the span of his hand.

Sive sat up as well, and on her other side, Halvard, who sleepily ground the heel of his hand into his eye. He yawned and blinked and then startled suddenly, springing to his feet.

"You didn't wake me!" he cried, crossing to stand beside Elrohir. Halvard eyed the hares, the pair of waterskins fat and still gleaming from being re-filled, and started to speak again, his voice near to indignation. "I would have—"

Elrohir took his belt and tugged. Halvard had to sit or topple; he sank down beside the _peredhel_, looking unsure whether to feel anxious or annoyed.

Sive needed no such invitation. She stood and stretched and pushed her hair out of her eyes and joined them at the fire. She hobbled still, and I saw Elrohir watching her closely from beneath his lashes, though his hands did not cease at their work. When she sat, he rolled a waterskin against her knee with his toe.

"Thank you," she murmured, and drank deeply, and when she had slaked her thirst she set the skin aside and pulled the second hare into her lap. She cast about, as if what she needed might be laying somewhere in the grass. Elrohir ceased his own labor and turned his eyes fully upon her.

"May I borrow a knife?" she asked.

For a moment he regarded her, and then he slid his fingers into the top of his tall boot and produced a small, straight blade. He turned it and offered it to her handle-first.

"Thank you," she said again, and began to dress the hare with smooth, efficient strokes.

All three of us watched her, though she seemed not to notice. She had the hide on the insides of the forelegs and drumsticks split and peeled away before I shook off my surprise. She worked the skin up to the hare's flanks and when she had enough for a handhold she held out the long hind feet for Elrohir to grasp.

He took them, looking somewhat bemused, and had to tighten his hold abruptly when Sive hauled back on her handful of skin and peeled it cleanly over the hare's shoulders and neck. It came loose from the head with a faint _pop_ and Sive tumbled backwards on the grass, the wet hare hide dangling from her hand.

Elrohir dived forward laughing and helped her to sit again. He held up the now-naked hare by its hind feet. "A neat trick," he said. "I wish I had thought of it after all my years of skinning hares the hard way."

"Works for squirrels too," said Sive. "And rabbits, but you have to be gentle because they have such thin skin."

Elrohir lifted the hare he had been working on. "Have I butchered it too badly?" he asked. "Or do you think it salvageable?"

Sive took it from him with the squint of a practiced eye, made a few slices, and repeated the peeling process. Elrohir was smiling when he took up a green stick from the grass beside him, sharpened the end, spitted the hares, and laid them over the coals. He wiped his hands on the grass and cleaned his knife with a splash of water and the tail of his trailing shirt. Sive gave him back his spare when she had cleaned it also, and he returned it to his boot. I did not see where he secreted the first one.

Halvard seemed to remember something. He came back to where we had slept beneath the tree and found his borrowed dagger in its sheath beside his discarded cloak. He picked it up, brushed a smear of dust from the handle, and then turned and offered it to Elrohir.

"You'll be wanting this back," he said.

"I thought perhaps you would carry it for me for a time," said Elrohir. He was intent on adjusting the spitted hares and did not look up. "I find myself weighted down already. I would be grateful."

Halvard seemed to consider this for a moment, then he gave a short nod and unbuckled his belt and threaded it through the slotted scabbard. Elrohir looked across at me. I still had his cloak pulled over my lap.

"You may join us if you like, youngling," he said, and I felt a sudden and unexpected surge of temper at the epithet. I rose with great serenity, found my foot tangled in the heavy Elven cloak, and had to kick a half-dozen times to free myself.

"I've need of the woods," I muttered to no one in particular, feeling my face burn. I whirled and dashed away before anyone could see the tears spilling hotly over my cheekbones.

As I fled I heard Sive say, "Don't mind her. She's always a troll in the mornings."

-o0o-

When I returned, the spitted hares were beginning to sizzle and drip, and I had mastered myself. It had required a round scolding I had delivered to myself in a mutter. It was no matter that Elrohir had gifted Halvard with the dagger; he had none and would need it if we chanced to be attacked again. I had paced and ranted and ordered myself to cease such petty jealousy, and at last had calmed enough to return. Too much longer and I knew they would come looking.

I dropped down beside Sive and accepted the waterskin she offered. As I drank, Elrohir pulled the hares from the fire. He sucked in his breath as he lifted them and I thought perhaps he had scorched his fingers, but then I saw the clamping arm, the brief bow of his head. His forehead creased fleetingly with something akin to annoyance, and when it smoothed and he straightened all three of us were watching him closely.

"They pain you still, sir," said Halvard. He leaned with restless hands as if he wished to help but knew not how.

Elrohir did not answer. His left hand fumbled beneath his long shirt and emerged grasping the tail of a strip of cloth. He unwound it with a series of impatient tugs and left it in a jumble near his knee.

"Shall we dine?" he said, beginning to pick apart the steaming hare.

"My lord, you should not strain yourself," said Halvard. He reached to take the task from Elrohir and was dealt a quelling look.

"If ever I strain myself serving a hare, Master Halvard, then you may take my horse _and_ my captaincy and return to Imladris with the news of my intolerable disgrace."

Halvard's cheeks brightened. "Forgive me, my lord, I did not mean—"

Elrohir thrust a drumstick into his hands and gently tugged a sprig of tumbling red hair. "I am teasing you, little Dúnadan. I am grateful for your concern." He broke off more meat and passed it to Sive and I. He stayed our snatching hands long enough to murmur a brief benediction over the meal and helped himself to the remaining hind leg.

"It is a good first lesson to learn, in fact," he said when he had consumed a few mouthfuls. "Soldiers must look out for one another. It does not matter if you cannot stand the sight of them, if you would never give them so much as a _good morning_ if you passed them in the hall. When we are in the wild, we are brothers. Or sisters," he added with a tip of his head towards Sive and me. "If you cannot trust the one beside you then you may as well be companionless." He paused long enough to take another bite. "However, it is not an equal hierarchy. It cannot be. Master Halvard, do you care to tell me why that is?"

"Because without a leader men will only fight amongst themselves," Halvard said without hesitating. "They will fight over who has the right to lead them."

"And they will accomplish nothing, because there will be discord over whose decisions to implement," said Elrohir. "Very good. Mistress Sive, can you tell me why it is important to heed the commands you are given?"

Sive pondered this. Her answer came slowly. "Because… there may be danger. And because you have been a warrior for many years. Haven't you?"

"A few," Elrohir said with a tip of his chin. "And you are very correct. When danger comes there is rarely time to explain an order given." Lastly he turned to me. "Mistress Eluned. Tell me what might happen if a soldier fails to follow orders."

His eyes on mine were not particularly piercing; his tone held no incrimination. All the same I suspected he had been saving this particular question for me.

"Someone might be hurt," I mumbled. "Or… or killed."

"And one undisciplined warrior sets a poor pattern for the others in the same company." He cast his eyes over all three of us. "But along with that, a person does honor to themselves by submitting to the authority of a worthy commander. And they give honor to the one who commands. Eluned, does your father battle the Chieftain for authority?"

"No," I answered. I did not have to think about it. "He goes where Aragorn bids without complaint or question."

"And is he shamed by it?" Elrohir asked.

"No!" I cried. "Our people esteem my father. They think no less of him for doing as the Chieftain commands. He is Aragorn's most trustworthy captain!"

"He most certainly is that," Elrohir said gently. The hares were mostly devoured and Sive and Elrohir both began to crack the bones and peel marrow from the cavities within them. After a moment of watching their technique—roasted hare had much harder bones than hare stewed for hours, and took a strong set of molars—Halvard and I did the same. Elrohir flipped shards of bone into the fire and wiped grease off his fingers onto the grass. When he spoke again his voice had grown serious. "There is a reason we discuss these things, young ones. We are here on the edge of the wild, and I know not what evil has infiltrated into what were once protected lands. The wolves are threat enough, but they may not be the only threat. It is near to eighteen miles back to your home. A distance any one of us could travel in a day, were we sound of body, but we are not, and the surest path may not be the safest."

We leaned in closer as he spoke, for he addressed us in a voice uncondescending, as if commanding warriors instead of a trio of wide-eyed children.

"It comes to this, then," he continued. "We must look after each other, all of us, and you must do honor to yourselves and to me, and follow my instructions without question. I pray that your lives will not depend upon it, but there is a chance that they may." His grave eyes fell on each of us in turn. "Do I have your word as the children of your fathers, the Rangers of the West, that you will obey me until we are safely back where we belong?"

"Yes, my lord," said Sive, her eyes wide at the solemnity of his words. Halvard and I echoed her. Elrohir reached out both hands and clapped Halvard and Sive—the ones who sat near to either side of him—on their respective shoulders.

"Good," he said, and his eyes were merry again. "Here is my first command: eat well and drink deeply, for we shall travel as quickly as we can." He started to rise, but Halvard picked up the trailing end of the linen that had wrapped Elrohir beneath his shirt.

"Captain," he said, in a voice so firm it surprised me. "I would help you bind your ribs again. Surely they will hinder you if we do not."

Elrohir seemed equally surprised. For a moment I thought he would decline, but Halvard added, almost shyly, "We must look after each other."

Elrohir let his breath out in a rush and smiled wryly. He sank sitting again and tugged his shirt off over his head.

For a long moment I stared. His side from breast to breeches was one thunderous bruise, yellowing only at the edges, and the wound above the crest of his hipbone was wealed with red and gaping around black and broken threads. Only the stitches nearest his belly still held the skin together.

"Hmm," Elrohir said softly, glancing down with an arch in his eyebrow, as if he had just now happened to notice the weeping tear and black contusions.

"Your side!" I gasped when at last I found my voice.

He darted me a brief smile. "On my saddle, Eluned, there's a pouch behind the cantle."

I dashed and returned with it clutched in my hands. Elrohir took it from me and withdrew a flat silver case with a tightly fitted lid. He twisted it open and coaxed a globule of yellow salve onto his fingertips.

"Your Chieftain will have choice words for me when he sees how I have spoiled his careful embroidery," said Elrohir through his teeth as he greased the wound and the skin around it. He picked a few loose threads from the edges and wiped his fingers behind his knee. "The wrap now, Halvard, if you would."

"Please, my lord, let me," said Halvard, and Elrohir relented, though not before he took out his knife and cut the cloth nearly in half. He nudged Halvard's hands in adjustment, and bade him pull it tighter, bracing himself against the ground. Halvard tied the shortened bandage off beneath his shoulder blade and Elrohir twisted at the waist, rolling his right arm experimentally. He reached for his shirt.

"Infinitely better," he said, pulling it over his head, and Halvard flushed with pleasure at the praise. Next came Elrohir's short-sleeved jerkin, and he pushed to his feet as his fingers worked the intricate lacing up the front.

"Now, young warriors," he said, tying the lace with a flourish. "Gather your things and report back here when you have finished, and we shall begin our march."

We had little to gather, but we doused the fire with fistfuls of dirt and discarded the rabbit carcasses under a bush while Elrohir whistled his horse and saddled it. Sive was moving slowly, and when we reassembled beside the cold fire, Elrohir picked up the linen he had hacked from his own bandage.

"I will bind your ankle, if you will permit me," he said, and Sive nodded. She folded to the grass and he knelt and gentled her boot off, drew her hosed foot into his lap. He pressed her swollen ankle through the wool, her heel and the bridge of her foot, and then he wrapped her tightly from toes to shin.

"You will tell me if it begins to throb?" he asked as he offered his forearm for her to pull herself up on, and again she nodded.

"Thank you, sir," she said.

"We must look after each other," he said, smiling. He cupped her shin and boosted her into his saddle. At last he turned to me, and in his hand was the dagger he had taken from me the day before, my father's blade in its dark sheath.

"You will bring up the rear," he said. He flipped the weapon, caught it by the tip, and offered me the handle. I took it in my hand but he did not immediately release it. He held fast his end until I looked up at him, and once again his bright grey eyes were stern.

"It is a heady task, young Halbaradiell," he said, his voice pitched so the others would not hear. "We are trusting you to watch behind us."

"I will watch," I said resolutely. "You can trust me."

He released the dagger to me and gripped my shoulder briefly in his strong hand. "I know I can," he said, and for hours after I basked in the approval of those words.

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><p><em>Thank you for reading, and for the favoritesfollows, and all the gorgeous reviews! You guys make me happy :D_


	7. A Savage Sort of Grace

_A/N: Cairistiona7, Linda Hoyland, and Levade helped me tremendously with this chapter._

_To Hideypidey, who left a delightfully encouraging guest review, thank you so, so much! The parent in me wants to shake Eluned, too, but the middle child in me feels for her! I'm delighted to hear you think I'm achieving the balance._

_Thank you also for pointing out that typo! Pay attention, kids, spell check matters. One misused homophone, and our heroic half-elven knight spends the rest of the story with a giant bald patch burned in his shiny black tresses._

_And to my anonymous guest reviewer... what nice things you say! I'm sorry I didn't manage two in a day for you, but here's another, if you're still checking!_

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>VII<p>

_A Savage Sort of Grace_

Elrohir led us through the forest north of the main trail. There the trees were clotted with undergrowth and we could not travel swiftly. Our captain would not risk the more open pathway to the south. When I asked him about this he paused long enough to grin at me.

"Your ada would say it is because it brushes his neck-hairs the wrong way."

I must have looked bewildered, because he chuckled and added, "I am uneasy on the road. I have no reason that I can say, so you will have to trust me." He winked, reminding me startlingly of the Chieftain. "Elvish intuition."

I wrinkled my nose. "You are only half-Elvish."

"Nearer to three-quarters," he said jauntily. "And you are impudent. Get back to your post."

As we marched Elrohir plied us with challenges. He accorded us a penalty for every broken stick or rustling bramble, with the explanation that whoever had the most penalties by the end of the day would have to prepare our supper. Halvard and I were creeping along at a snail's pace trying to move silently when Elrohir chanced to look back and see us a hundred yards behind him. He growled at us to keep up, that the game was not a game if we got picked off for being too slow.

He seemed determined to assure himself that we would act upon his commands without hesitating. Twice without warning he barked the order to get down. The first time I merely crouched, for the path was black with mud and littered with leaves. Halvard on his belly glanced up in alarm, but even as he hissed at me to join him, Elrohir stalked back along our little column and swept my feet from underneath me with his boot. He cast himself down beside me, pressing me to the ground with a hand between my shoulder blades.

"Next time, all the way," he said in my ear, and the next time, I did.

At midmorning we paused briefly beside a stream to slake our thirst and partake of a little of the sweet bread, though he did not allow us much. The day was warmer than others had been lately; there was more of summer in the air than autumn, but occasionally when the trees thinned we could see mustering clouds to the north. Elrohir tied his cloak and Halvard's and mine behind his saddle, for even beneath the shade of the trees we were warm enough walking without them. Before we started out again he gathered us around him.

"Halvard, you will teach Eluned the signals as we go," he said. "I will teach Sive. Softly, though. We should not give away five hundred years of honored Ranger secrets by talking of them too loudly."

The easiest path wound west and a little north alongside the stream, and it was clear enough of undergrowth that Halvard and I could walk shoulder-to-shoulder. Ahead of us I could hear Elrohir's voice pitched low in instruction, his breathy whistles as he demonstrated, and Sive repeating them back hesitantly. Beside me Halvard looked irritated. I felt his mood creep across the space between us and worm under my skin.

"Well, are you going to teach me?" I said crossly.

He swatted at a geranium. "Do you even know _how_ to whistle?"

"Of course I do!"

He made a disgruntled sound in his throat, casting a wary look ahead at our guide. "I don't know, Eluned."

"_What_ don't you know," I growled.

"If I should teach you."

"Elrohir told you to!"

Halvard made a hasty shushing gesture with his hand.

"Well he _did_," I whispered. "And you have to do as he says. You swore on the Rangers of the West."

"Yes, but…" he trailed off and walked in silence for a few steps. "I'll be one of them someday," he went on at last. "And you won't."

"Your _point_?" I snarled.

He shrugged. "I just don't know if you should know."

I almost jumped on him then. I was suddenly certain of his intent—or lack of it—Halvard had ever lorded over me his knowledge, his days of training with the Rangers. Dúnedain boys learned early the sword and the bow, the woodcraft they would need if they took the grey cloak. They served as village guards in the men's absence until they came of age and swore fealty to Aragorn. The day Halvard had been assigned his first sentry, he had hunted me up just to gloat.

If I learned the signals the Rangers used, he would have one less thing to exult over me.

"You had better teach me," I hissed. "Else I'll tell Elrohir you didn't do as he said."

As if on cue, Elrohir called over his shoulder "Let's hear some whistling back there."

Grudgingly, Halvard began to instruct me. He was impatient—"No, Eluned, _three _notes before the warble. Have you ever even _heard_ a lark? That sounded like old Bryn calling her chickens." After perhaps half an hour of increasing frustration I finally stopped cold in the path beside the stream.

"I cannot learn if you're going to be so bad-tempered about it," I said, scowling. I was vaguely aware of Elrohir and the horse halting ahead of us.

"You can't seem to learn them anyway," Halvard said. "Elbereth, Eluned, your father should be _happy_ you're not a boy. You'd never make a Ranger."

My sight was glazing with red before he even finished. I hauled back my right hand and punched him in the mouth. It glanced off and sent him reeling and I threw my shoulder at his middle and my momentum carried us sprawling backwards onto the path. He tried to shove my head away, tried to kick me off him, but I was flailing and cursing and doing my level best to break his teeth or his nose. He rolled upright and scrabbled to pin my arms but I was wild with fury and wiry enough to roll us both again, and that is when Lord Elrohir descended.

He scooped me off of Halvard by an elbow and a knee and slung me into the slow-moving stream.

I surfaced in time to catch the splash of Halvard's landing full in the face. The water there was waist-deep and outrageously cold. I scraped it from my eyes, blew it thickly out of my nose, and when at last they cleared I looked up to see Elrohir crouched on the bank.

"Pay attention, children," he said. "There are times to quarrel with your brothers or sisters, but now is not one of those times."

"The whore-begotten bastard isn't my brother!"

Elrohir ducked me again. He did not hold me under long, but it was long enough that when I came up I had thought better of disputing him. Arms wet to the shoulders, he leaned back from the edge of the water and sat on his heels. He waited calmly until I finished sputtering.

"He is your brother as long as we are in this quandary," he said. "And your task is to watch his back, not knock him on it."

He turned to Halvard. "I am not your father, boy, but the name of Elbereth is not one to bandy, and I will not hear you use it vainly. Aside from that, I charged you with teaching Eluned a skill she may need to survive, and I expect you to do it willingly and without complaint. Someday you may have to train young Rangers, and you had better hone your patience."

Back to me. "The next time you must hit him, keep your thumb outside your fingers else you break it." He held out his hand and I took it and let him haul me out of the water. When I was standing beside him he bent and said softly, " And I would not have taken it kindly had you tattled on Halvard like a spoiled little girl. If you must lever him with threats, think of better ones."

"Yes, sir," I said, a little startled that he had heard me at all.

Halvard clambered up on the bank. He was streaming water, his hair dark with it, and from his expression I could tell he had not forgiven me.

"Did she rattle your head again?" Elrohir asked him.

"No," said Halvard. His nose bled. Elrohir ran his thumb and finger down the bridge of it, peered at the trickling split in his eyebrow. Then he took our napes in either hand and steered us to his horse. Sive sat looking a little bored.

"This happens often?" Elrohir asked her as he dug in the pouch behind the cantle.

"Any time they cross paths," she said.

Elrohir laughed and handed Halvard the flat container of salve. "You will tend her knuckles," he said, lifting my hand to show him. He turned to me. "When he is through, you will see to his brow. And if you cannot learn to get along I will fetter you together by your necks until you do."

I suspected this was no idle threat. Halvard looked mutinous, but he spread my bleeding knuckles with Elrohir's yellow unguent and handed me the silver tin. I smeared a fingertip's worth onto the split in his eyebrow. Somewhere in the midst of this I inadvertently caught his eye, and had to quash a bubbling snort of laughter.

"What?" Halvard snapped. I shook my head but a snigger burst out of me. "Stop it!" Halvard ordered. He pinched his lips but the dam was running over and when I gave up and began helplessly to laugh, he could not suppress himself any longer. He clapped a hand across his eyes and joined me.

"They are losing their minds," Sive told Elrohir solemnly.

He nudged her knee. "It is fortunate they have you to look after them."

-o0o-

Halvard relieved me at the rear of the column, and for a while I could travel unconcerned with keeping watch. I found my thoughts drifting towards home, but the feelings this brought were both sweet and unsettling and before long I was desperate for distraction. I edged alongside Elrohir's horse and walked beside the stirrup. Sive bumped me in the shoulder with her linen-wrapped foot.

"I wish I'd have twisted _my_ ankle," I teased her as I reached back to plait my damp hair. The tail of it dripped a spreading wet spot in the small of my back. "Then I could be riding while you walk."

"I would trade you," she said, shifting in the saddle. "I am sore. And hungry. Do you know what I think?"

"Hmm," I said absently. Ahead of us Elrohir had stopped to look across the stream to the south and east.

"I think the Rangers can _keep_ their adventures. I will stay home and tend the sheep."

I grimaced. "That is likely what we'll be doing until we are old and married, after this."

"At least I will be fed," she said. "And warm. And the only wolves will be small ones you can drive away with a sling." She threaded her fingers through the horse's dark mane. "If I had a brave horse like Cabor I would not fear the wolves."

I felt my eyebrows spring up. "Cabor?"

Sive leaned against his neck and hugged it. "That is his name," she said, a little defensively. "Don't tease him about it, it isn't his fault."

"Yes, but_…_" I stopped to look at him, his straight hard legs and gleaming shoulder, the clean lines of his throat and fine-boned face, his great kind eye and muzzle so round and velvet-coated I wanted to cup it in my palm like a kitten. Behind his ear was a slender braid tied off with silver thread and a tuft of hackle feathers, blue like the ones on his master's boot. We were nearly caught up to Elrohir where he stood poised in the path, and I scrunched my nose and said, "Elrohir, why did you name your horse 'Frog'?"

He peered into the trees as if he could see beyond them into some greater distance, and his body was rigid. His hand fluttered briefly alongside his thigh. After a long moment he relaxed, though the faint lines of his forehead did not disappear completely.

"What is wrong with calling him Cabor?" he said, turning to us.

"He is beautiful!" Sive said. "He should have a _good_ name."

"He is passing handsome, I suppose," said Elrohir. "Though his ears are a trifle long, and his halt is as heavy on the forehand as a mûmak's." He smacked Cabor amiably on the wide space between his forelegs and received a nip below his belt in retaliation. "Cease," Elrohir commanded. "Or I shall change your name to 'Gelded'."

Their peculiar exchange halted when Cabor suddenly threw his head up, fine ears flicking forward, and a trembling whicker rolled out of his nose. Elrohir ran a hand up his neck and settled it on his poll, just over the base of the dangling braid.

"Peace, little brother," he said softly, his jocularity vanished. "I know he is coming."

"Who is coming?" Sive asked. I could hear her nervousness and had to fight to keep my own from rising, in spite of Elrohir's evident ease and his bow slung unstrung between his shoulder blades. His mouth quirked, a wry expression I was coming to recognize. He made a short breathy sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

"Elladan," he said, and then muttered such a vile curse I felt my eyes fly wide in delighted astonishment.

-o0o-

It happened quickly: a muffled thunder of hooves, a flash of dappled hide on the far bank, a breath of silence as the grey horse gathered and sprang across the stream as lightly as a deer might. It landed skidding, carving furrows in the loam as it drove to a halt, and before the iron-shod hooves had stilled completely the Heir of Imladris stepped down with a savage sort of grace and collected a fistful of Elrohir's jerkin in one leather-tabbed hand.

He spoke so rapidly in Sindarin I could scarcely comprehend him, and Elrohir answered in kind, his eyes tipped up in exasperation. I realized it was not only the speed of their conversing that confused me. They spoke a dialect of Elvish I could not understand, but for the occasional word flitting over my ear and vanishing again almost before I could recognize it. Even so, I would have been a fool to misunderstand the essence: Lord Elladan was doling out a tongue-lashing, but it seemed to be rolling fruitlessly off his brother's back. Elrohir pried his twin's fingers from the leather of his jerkin and shoved the hand down between them. He gestured in our direction with his remaining hand as he spoke. Lord Elladan turned to us. His eyes, at once familiar and alarmingly fierce, raked the length of me, flitted up to Sive and past us to Halvard. The steel of them seemed to soften a little and when he turned back to Elrohir his fist had relaxed. He said something in a dry tone of voice and shoved his brother lightly in the chest.

Elrohir stepped back all the same, jaw tight around teeth I knew he gritted. His twin's eyes narrowed, dark brows drawing. He bent and jerked up the hem of Elrohir's jerkin, slapping away objecting hands.

Elrohir executed a neat half-turn to the side and smoothed the leather back down his leg. He grinned as his own likeness advanced on him, and in what I deemed a spectacular show of courage, reached out and batted Lord Elladan on the cheek with the back of his hand.

"Stop," he said in Sindarin. "I will mend without your fretting."

"Good," Elladan snapped. "Because as soon as you mend I intend to thrash you back into infirmity."

Elrohir snorted at this, but Elladan turned away from him. He seemed to take in Sive's wrapped ankle, Halvard with Elrohir's knife, and Ada's dagger hanging at my side all in quick succession, his eyes never alighting on any one of us for long.

"What, pray tell, are these infants doing so far from home?" he asked, turning back to his twin.

I may have imagined it, but Elrohir seemed to straighten a fraction.

"Hunting wargs with me," he said coolly.

Elladan looked for a moment as if he did not wish to wait for Elrohir to mend before he thrashed him, but the moment passed. He began again in the unfamiliar dialect.

"You may speak plainly," Elrohir interrupted. "They are old enough to hear it."

Elladan cast us a last appraising look. "Very well," he said in the Common. "We found three farmsteads burned, and Tûg the shepherd's cot was razed and he and his grandsons slain. There were signs of orcs upon the sward beside the river and we caught up at dusk and routed them from a cave in the riverbank where they had gone to ground. I rode south with Aragorn and Halbarad to see if there were more, and near the junction of the rivers we found a place across the Bruinen where many had gathered. It was upon our return that we saw the smoke from the pyre you lit and found your cairn by the roadside." He rounded on Elrohir. "You did not chance to mention that you had in your care both Hald's son and a pair of maidens."

"It would have made for a cumbersome rune-writing," said Elrohir with a flick of his hand. "Where are Aragorn and Halbarad now?"

I had been wondering the same thing, though out of concern for my father or myself when he found me, I could not have said.

"They are riding west," Elladan said. "There are refugees coming behind us."

Elrohir's face had grown grave. "And the orcs from the south?"

"We could not track them further," Elladan answered. "Our mounts were weary and we had need to report back to the others of the things we had found. But we cannot tarry, Elrohir." He gripped his brother's arm. "There is some devising behind these attacks that sits uneasily in my belly. If the orcs crossed the river they will have driven north in the night, and with the Rangers gone Dírhael is left unguarded."

I felt a cold disquiet begin to unfurl in my gut.

Elladan went on, the words coming quickly. "Aragorn and Halbarad feared the same. They were returning to fortify the settlement and I to report to Coru when we found your token. They continued on while I came hunting you. And now I shall escort you back to meet them there."

The last he spoke crisply, as if he expected his twin to dispute him. I know I wished to. It was suddenly very clear to me that I had nothing with which to temper my father's displeasure, no usefulness to offer as distraction from my disobedience. The thought of facing both him and my mother in a few short hours filled me with the desire to march to Lord Elladan and dig in my heels and refuse to follow him anywhere. But even my audacious tongue was not sufficient to the task of confronting this hard-eyed knight, this lord with authority in the very span of his shoulders, the tang-straight set of his spine. Though I knew I had no need to fear him, he intimidated me in a way that left me rigid with the need to stay silent and respectful.

For a heartbeat I thought Elrohir would argue; his jaw was tight and his eyes stubborn. But Elladan hooked an arm around his neck and spoke in his ear, and with a huffed exhalation, Elrohir relaxed. The stiffness sagged out of his shoulders and for a fleeting moment he looked so weary it frightened me. Then he smiled, his forehead creasing ruefully. He turned to me with an expression that was nearly sympathetic.

"Best gird yourself, young one," he said. "We are off to find your ada."

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	8. Afraid to Face Your Reckoning

_A/N: I am unendingly grateful to my Betas Three, without whom this story would be a muddled, plotless, half-drafted thing languishing forever in the dark fireswamp of my hard drive._

_Thank you also for the favorites/follows/lovely reviews, all of which make me grin like a hyena and wish I could round off into a celebratory double back handspring. But that is the stuff America's Funniest Home Videos are made of, so I shall settle for a sedate bow of sincere gratitude._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>VIII<p>

_Afraid to Face Your Reckoning_

The elder twin led us now, and for a while Elrohir traveled at his shoulder. They set a swifter pace than we had during the morning. Though he did it subtly, scarcely pausing, I did not fail to notice when Elladan took Elrohir's bow from his back and braced it with his foot and strung it. Elrohir unbuckled his quiver and passed it to his brother with his left hand. Then he removed his sword belt and re-laced the sheath, so when he donned it again the draw was left-handed, the weapon hanging from his right hip. The two conversed haltingly in hushed tones, and I edged closer with my head tipped, straining to overhear. I caught the familiar cadence of my father's name, and Elrohir's voice lilting wryly, and then Lord Elladan looked over his shoulder and pinioned me with his indomitable eyes. I realized how near I had come up behind them, almost close enough to be stepping on their heels. I stopped dead in the path. Cabor walked past me, Sive's foot brushing my arm. My face flamed when I heard Elrohir say to his brother, "She is Halbarad's middle one."

"Why am I not surprised?" answered Elladan dryly, and my face burned even hotter. Feeling strangely chastised, I let Sive on the dark horse put a measure of distance between myself and the _peredhil_, and only then did I continue to trudge. Halvard at the rear was watching vigilantly for orcs and did not seem to notice the dragging of my feet. Feet that, with every step, carried me closer to swift retribution…

Ahead of us Elladan broke away from his brother and the horses and ran nimbly down the path out of sight. Elrohir allowed Sive to catch up with him. Cabor halted at his master's side and Elrohir looked up at Sive and spoke to her, laughed at whatever answer he received. He slid two fingers into the top of her wrapping, gauging the tightness, and again where it covered the bridge of her foot. He patted her leg and glanced back at me, and I could not mold my face out of its scowl in time to keep him from noticing. He swatted Cabor to send him on and waited in the path for me to draw alongside.

"Why the foul face, Halbaradiell?"

"Don't call me that," I snapped before I could stop myself. Immediately my cheeks ignited, and I scuffed my toe in the damp dirt. I did not look at him but could feel his eyes keenly on the side of my face. After a long moment I swallowed and said in a softer tone, "Lord Elladan has seen my father?"

"He has."

"And he was… he is well?"

"He is," said Elrohir, and at last I looked at him, not sure what I would find. To my surprise there was kindness written there, and that tugging mouth. "Although I expect the sight of you upon our arrival might relieve him of his good health."

I could not suppress a groan. "He is going to kill me."

"That is doubtful."

"You don't know him," I retorted without thinking, and looked up in time to see Elrohir's eyebrow arch elegantly.

"I knew him forty years before _you_ rounded your mother's belly, youngling," he said mildly, and I felt a flush creep up my neck.

"Forgive me," I muttered.

His head dipped in acknowledgement. Ahead of us the sun shafted briefly through a break in the trees and was blotted out by a rolling cloud. I saw Sive hunch her shoulders a little and felt a finger of chill weasel into my collar.

"Is that why you are marching along so grimly, then?" he asked after a moment. "Afraid to face your reckoning?"

"I'm not afraid!"

Again, the arching eyebrow.

"I'm not," I insisted, a little softer. I was beginning to wish he would resume his post at the head of the column and leave me to brood in peace, but he made no effort to catch up with the lead. He tipped his head and raised a hand to rub at the back of his neck.

"I remember a time…" he began, his voice deliberate. "…when I was afraid to return home and face my adar."

I tried and failed to imagine Elrohir afraid. "You must have been very young," I said.

He shook his head against the fingers he had laced through his dark hair, and his chest expanded with a hushed chuckle. "No, I was not."

Sometime during our brief acquaintance it seemed he had learned precisely how to pique my curiosity. "Why were you afraid?" I asked.

"I had gone against his wishes. And in my anger and imprudence I nearly caused my brother's death." He looked down at me and said gravely, "You should say a prayer of thanks that your friend suffered no more than twisted ankle while caught up in the midst of your folly."

His tone was far from harsh, but he could not have subdued me more thoroughly had he shouted.

"I did not wish her harmed," I murmured.

He smiled slightly. Understandingly. Even so I felt compelled to go on, if only to hear my justification, to hear if it sounded as reasonable spoken aloud as it had in my head as I had planned my adventure. "I only wished to…" I had to stop and swallow back the mortifying threat of tears. "I only wished to be useful," I said. "And to go with him, and not be left behind again." I kicked a stone and sent it skidding.

"And to wield your independence?" he prodded gently.

I kicked the stone again. It was heavy enough that I felt the darting ache right up to my knee.

"Was your adar cross?" I asked after a handful of silent steps.

Elrohir made a thoughtful sound. When I glanced up I saw the hand rubbing again, his face tilted with an expression of vague amusement.

"I am not certain that _cross_ is the word I would choose," he said. "But regardless, I could not evade him forever. And when the time came to face him I found that many of my fears were of my own making."

"That is easy for _you_ to say," I said darkly. "You are too old to tan."

Elrohir tipped his head back laughing and begged my pardon when I scowled at him severely. Even so it was some moments before he managed to cough the merriment out of his throat. All the while I kicked my stone along the path and thought black thoughts. I would have turned on my heel and departed from him, but I had no place to go.

When at last he mastered himself he said, "Forgive me, Eluned, I should not have laughed." He did not look particularly contrite, in my opinion, but I muttered the proper acceptance nonetheless. I was in enough trouble without adding rudeness to my tally of offenses.

"Do you know what I remembered when at last I returned home?" he said after a few minutes of walking in silence.

I shook my head.

"I remembered that parents wish only the best for their children, for their safety and bliss, even if there are times when we might chafe beneath the methods they employ, or the restrictions they place to keep us from harm."

His words were heavy with truth, but I was neither humble nor happy enough to admit that he was right. Instead I snapped the broad white flower off a towering angelica and said, "The Chieftain once said that the Elves do not strike their children."

"It is not customary," Elrohir agreed slowly.

Again I scowled at him, feeling as if I had lost an ally. "Then you have never _been_ tanned." It was more accusation than question.

"I did not say that," he answered, his eyes crinkled. I felt my own eyes widen but before I could demand a confession he held up a hand. "I have already admitted to being willful in my youth," he said with a sternness I knew was not genuine. "And any further tales of my unruliness must wait." I followed his gaze and saw that Elladan had returned from his brief foray and was beckoning impatiently. Before he answered the summons, Elrohir caught my shoulder. "Your father's love for you is fierce, child," he said. "If I have learned nothing else about him in our years of soldiering together, I know him to be a man blazing with love for his daughters." His fingers tightened briefly before releasing me. He left me standing with the hollow in my chest no narrower, but somehow the jagged edges of it had smoothed.

-o0o-

The twin _peredhil_ conversed in their swift dialect. I glanced about me and realized that the land was familiar; we were perhaps only two miles from home. The trees were thinning again and through them I could see the grey sky. The sun as it lowered into the west was strangely pink. I knew this place, knew the stream would soon dive away to the south where it crossed the path we had taken the morning before. The blackberry bushes were thick among the beech trees and the women and children of the village often came in the late summer to challenge the birds to the berry crop. We stood on the very edge of a clearing, and beyond it the wood closed in again and ran thickly right up to the north-eastern border wall. If you did not know our settlement was there, it was possible to walk within three hundred yards of it and never see a single roof.

The wind shifted slightly and my nose began to tingle. I could smell woodsmoke and wondered if perhaps I was mistaken, and we were closer than I had thought. Before I could ponder this further, Elrohir called our names, and I looked up to see Lord Elladan jerking tight the girth of his saddle. He sprang and caught the stirrup with his toe and mounted fluidly. As Halvard and I came near, Elrohir hooked his left arm around Sive's waist and pulled her from his own saddle, lowered her to the ground braced against his sound side. He left her standing near him and tightened his own girths, fore and hind, and dug in his pack behind the cantle. When he emerged he held a short ivory-colored horn bound in engraved silver. This he pressed into Halvard's hands.

"Stay here," he said, "until someone comes for you."

"What is happening?" I asked. There was a tremor of wildness in my voice; Elrohir's face was frighteningly drawn, and past him on the grey horse Elladan thumbed loose the containing clasp that held his sword fast in its sheath.

"If we have not called you by dusk you must take to the trees," Elrohir said, ignoring me. "You must get off the ground." He covered Halvard's hands on the horn with his own. "Only at direst need, do you understand me? Listen for the call, and do not follow us before it." Halvard nodded fiercely. He seemed to need no further explanation. Elrohir turned to me and took my tunic-laces in his hand and tugged me so close I had to crane my neck to meet his eye.

"Listen to Halvard," he said, so grave he seemed unfamiliar. Beyond him I heard Elladan say his name.

"I will," I said.

He gave me a shake. "You do as he says."

"Elrohir, we must go," said Elladan sharply.

I could do nothing but nod wide-eyed. Elrohir released me and mounted Cabor with less style than his brother had, leaning farther forwards as he swung his leg over than I imagined he was accustomed to doing, but he settled and straightened and gathered his reins, and when he looked down at Cabor's neck I heard him laugh softly.

Sive had woven all the mane within her reach into delicate plaits, and tied them off with thread unraveled from a snag in the knee of her hose. Elrohir tugged one straight where it had twined with another and smoothed them all with a swipe of his palm.

"Look after each other," he said. Elladan wheeled and trotted briskly away. Again the wind shifted and now the smell of smoke was thick and acrid in my throat. Elrohir jumped Cabor into a canter to catch up with his twin. They slipped into the trees on the far side of the clearing and disappeared, and it was then I looked up and saw the black column in the sky to the west, a heavy grease of smoke against the paler grey behind it, rising profanely above the line of the treetops.

Beside me Sive and Halvard stood and stared.

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	9. Built to Withstand Such Destruction

_I cannot pay my betas the handsome salaries they deserve, but if they end up with a review or two because of this recommendation, I'll feel a bit more like I've paid them back for all their time and hard work on this story. There are the links, right there in my favorites. *nudge nudge*_

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>IX<p>

_Built to Withstand Such Destruction_

The sun sank pink and dripping and I could not tear my eyes from the pillar of smoke as it billowed and spread into a distorting veil. It rose from the horizon in a dark roil as if whatever fueled it was burning brightly still.

_Whatever fueled it..._

Sive sat in the grass with her knees pulled inside her uncle's jerkin. She looked more tired than afraid, the grey of her eyes tarnished with weariness, her hands clasped loosely around her shins. I sank down beside her, my hip against hers, and together we sat mutely and stared towards home.

Halvard would not let us speak. Any sound we made he hushed ferociously, his hand slicing toward the ground. He stood in the clearing away from the trees, clutching Elrohir's horn in a white-knuckled hand. He tipped his head as if straining to hear.

He could not stand forever, though. I could tell his head was beginning to throb again; he kneaded above his left ear with three fingers absently, like one might at an elusive thought. Perhaps half an hour after the _peredhil_ left us, he came and sat down on Sive's other side. He kicked one leg out straight and let his chin fall on the other drawn-up knee. He muttered the same curse Elrohir was so fond of using.

"Maybe they are burning stubble," I said.

"That would be a lot of stubble," said Sive. "Acres of it."

"Maybe the rick by the sheepfold finally caught fire."

"That would have to be a big haystack."

"Hush," said Halvard. "Listen for the horn. They'll sound it any time now and then we can go."

"What if they don't?" I asked. "What if there is no horn?"

"Then we will stay here until they come for us."

"We could get closer. Perhaps we cannot hear the horn from here."

Halvard looked at me with disgust wrenching at the corners of his mouth. He shook his head slightly and dismissed me with a reviling roll of his eyes. "You will never learn," he said.

"Be quiet!" I snarled. I rose up on my knees and leaned towards him over Sive. "I don't need to learn anything!"

Sive—timid, delicate, pliable Sive—Sive who had ever followed me, put her slim hand in the middle of my chest and pushed so hard I tumbled back on my elbows. "Don't fight," she said, her eyebrows furrowed. She scooted away from Halvard so she could glare at him as well. "I'm tired of you fighting all the time. You squabble like a pair of geese over a carrot peel and it gives me a headache." With that she shoved to her feet and hobbled off and sat alone at the foot of an elm tree a distance away, leaving me sprawled and gaping, and Halvard staring into the distance with his face flaming red. We sat like that, none of us looking at each other, and when at last the faint sound of a horn carried to us, the sun had begun to disappear behind the tree-tops.

I leapt to my feet. There had been three notes played in the same breath, the pitch rising and falling again. "Did you hear it?" I cried, wheeling towards the path across the clearing that the horsemen had taken. But Halvard did not follow me. He was standing with a puzzled look on his face, clutching the ivory horn uncertainly.

"We can go," I said. "That was the call!"

"It was the wrong sound," he said vaguely, more to himself than in answering me. His forehead was rumpled. "The wrong call. It was a warning signal."

"They wish for us to come cautiously," I said. I wanted to take his hand and Sive's and yank them along behind me. I thought that another moment of waiting would cause me to crawl out of my skin with impatience. "That is all. Halvard, that was the signal to follow them!"

"I do not know for certain," he said slowly. "That was not the all-clear. I know the sound of it, and it is different. And it came from too far to the south." His thumb rubbed at the engraved silver rim of the horn.

"Well, answer it, then," I said, irritation sharpening my voice. "You have one too."

"Only at direst need," said Halvard. "I will not answer unless there is danger at hand."

"Then let us _go_," I said. Sive rose and limped to stand at Halvard's side. She gazed into the distance at the pillar of smoke. "Sive, come _on_."

"Halvard is in charge," she said after a long pause. "Elrohir told you to listen to him, Eluned. You have to do as he says." She turned wide expectant eyes towards Halvard and waited as he stood and fidgeted.

"You had better make a decision," I growled when he still had not spoken for another long moment. "Because I am going whether you are coming or not."

"We will go," he said at last. "But carefully. We do not know who sounded the warning, or why." His decision seemed to harden his resolve; he hitched Elrohir's dagger a little higher at his side, loosening it slightly in its sheath, and with a determined jut of his chin he lead us across the meadow and into the trees on the other side.

-o0o-

I strained for a glimpse of the village wall. I would have darted ahead but Halvard would not let me. He would let neither Sive nor I pass him, nor walk at his side, and in those two short miles Halvard seemed more man than stripling boy, even to me who resented him for it. He scarcely made a sound as he walked, and his eyes were minnow-quick and darting at the shadows, the red hair springing with the jerky movements of his vigilance. He made us travel warily as deer, stopping often to listen for voices. It was a strange way to come home, as if we approached the stronghold of some watchful enemy instead of the place where we had lived and grown for years.

But come home we did, and emerged from the trees behind the house of my father's grandparents where the wall was beginning to crumble. Away from the screening trees the smoke was suddenly thick enough to coat my throat and lungs like grease.

The village was burning.

The thatch of the house of Dírhael and Ivorwen had scorched away completely, the timbers beneath it charred and collapsing into the room below. Beyond it were others like stone cairns crowned in flames, and the stable with its bowers of hay and dry grain burned so hotly I could feel the sear of it a hundred yards away. There was a red horse dead on its side beside the door. Heat hovered and shimmered at my peripherals and when at last the shock of that first glimpse wore away I wrenched my eyes to the south, to the far corner within the wall, and I could see the roof of my own house where it stood as whole as it had been the day I had departed from it.

The relief was like a cold dousing. It rattled me from my stupor and as I came to myself I realized Halvard was dashing away along the outside of the wall where it circled north and butted against the back of the blacksmith's shed.

Without a thought, I followed him.

I caught up as he started to scale the stone wall, scrambling for holds in the mortar. He was up and dropping over the other side before I even began to climb, and when at last I breached the top and lowered myself into the village, Halvard ahead of me was disappearing into the dark door of his father's workplace.

It too had escaped the fire. It was built to withstand such destruction, after all, and within it I could see the glow of the forge still burning, the bellow-breathed fire perpetually hot. I hesitated, struck by a sudden peculiar unease. Looking in the wide door with the red light beyond seemed for a moment like peering down into a dark hole, and I found myself without any desire to enter there.

But then I heard Halvard moan, a low sinking sound, and I swallowed hard and plunged in after him.

When my eyes adjusted to the gloom I saw him beside the anvil on its great round oaken dais. He had fallen to his knees and was bent low over something he cradled in his arms. As I drew nearer I saw what he held and for a moment could not breathe.

It was a crutch. His father's crutch, the one worn smooth with years of use and oiling. It was broken and splintered midway down the staff and even in the dim light I could see the padded support was stained. Soiled with a dark wash that could only be blood.

The smithy was in disarray. In the rear of the room, the ladder to the loft stood crooked and cracked. There were tools scattered, and ash and burnt-out coals strewn away from the fire as if something had been dragged through them. The fire itself was no more than a dull red radiance in the deepest part of the room, back in its pit where it could burn away from the threat of wind and rain. Now it barely lit the space that was accustomed to roaring heat and cheerful light and the ring of metal beating metal.

I folded to my knees beside Halvard. His shoulders were shaking, but I knew without having to look that there would be no tears on his face. He held them ruthlessly in, and I understood that he had to, that if I touched him he would be overcome. So I knelt near and said, "No one is here."

I had not thought before I said it, but the truth hit me like a hammer-blow. There were no villagers, no survivors picking through the rubble. There were no charred or broken bodies in the streets between the houses. "Halvard, there is no one here. They escaped before the attack came. Halvard, your father is alive! He escaped."

Halvard was shaking his head. He shook it and shook it. "He cannot walk without it," he whispered. "He could not have escaped." He hefted his head and looked past me, into the deeper dark behind my shoulder where the light of the fire did not touch. "He is lying back there," he said, and swallowed hard. "Where else could he be? He is lying dead in the storeroom."

I felt my own throat convulse. The thought of venturing back into the recesses of the smithy left me watery with fear, but I could not stand the sight of Halvard crumpled and defeated. For some reason it made me angry. "He's not dead," I said fiercely, and grabbed Halvard's arm and tugged him. "Come with me, I'll show you. We'll look together and then you'll know." I tugged again and reluctantly Halvard let the crutch slip through his fingers. He used his hands to push himself to his feet, but even then his back was bent like an old man's. I did not stop to think, but gripped his hand hard in my own and rallied my scattering courage.

"He's not dead," I muttered again, and felt Halvard's hand tighten. He took the first step forward and I did not let him lead me, but pressed my shoulder firm against his and walked beside him into the blackness beyond the touch of the softly-glowing coals.

There was no light in that place for our eyes to collect, but for the dimmest red at the very edge behind us. It felt like walking into a mouth. The air past the storeroom door was as heavy as a wet shroud. It smelled like a cowhide left too long on a stretching-frame in summer heat, or the black mud at the bottom of a pond fed by no fresh stream.

It smelled like the breath of the wolf Elrohir had killed.

The hair on my neck was standing rigid, and Halvard's hand wrung mine so hard the bones ached. I heard the rough note of his dagger sliding free, and for some reason the sound made my skin wither with gooseflesh.

"Halvard," I whimpered, the sound of my own voice harsh in the dark, but he did not answer. In the profound silence following the word I had spoken I heard the rasp of breath sliding over razed lungs, and a sudden sickly fog invaded my nose in a cloying, staggering wave.

Then in the air before me a pair of dim yellow spheres flickered briefly and fixed on us. The breathing scraped and swelled into a malevolent wail. A form somehow blacker than the dark behind it sprang forward, and Halvard and I scrambled back, back into the light, and the thing hesitated. It hovered for a moment at the edge of the glow, hunched and weaving, and then it screeched again and scuttled forward and the moldering side of its face became clear, the sunken cheeks and teeth that showed ragged through rotting black lips. In its claw was a long haft tipped with a pronged pikehead and it thrust the weapon forward and hooked it behind my knee and yanked my feet from under me with a vicious tug. I landed hard on my tailbone, the air driving out of me in a great gasp, and I could not regain it to scream or to struggle. With a heave the goblin began to reel me closer, and then it wrenched its weapon free and my leg burst into flame and the pike whipped high and whirled to jab down into my unprotected belly…

Halvard lunged over me, the Elven dagger a flame in his hand. He dived and scored deeply, driving the bright steel out of sight, and the creature shrieked and snapped its body to the side, taking Halvard with it as it fell. I could see the scrabbling fingers, the long claws clutching and scraping at Halvard's face and neck, hear the gurgling mutters and the slosh of foul breath, and the _smell_, the smell made me retch until my eyes began to water. Through my tears I saw them roll together towards the fire in its pit on the floor, saw them roll across it, and Halvard cried out and writhed beneath the orc, away from the searing coals. But he was not quick enough to free himself completely and the creature caught him and lugged him back, scrabbled at his legs and belly as it dragged him within reach of its slavering mouth, and then I pushed myself up and scrambled on all fours to where a pair of heavy tongs lay broke open on the floor. I hauled them up and gained my feet and still the snarling, the grunts and curses and the _stench_, and I ignored the sear behind my knee and the burn of my eyes and hefted the tool with both hands and brought it crashing down across the mottled neck.

My blow did little more than distract the thing, but in that breath Halvard gave a mighty shove and sent it reeling, and quick as a snake he caught up the knife where it had fallen and plunged it into the bare throat, yanked it free and drove it in again, and again a third time. At last the goblin convulsed mightily and lay still, the sinewy head lolling obscenely to the side. Black blood gurgled from its riven neck.

Halvard rolled away from the orc and lay flat on his back, his chest heaving. His face was scored from hairline to jaw, his cheek gleaming with bright blood. I saw with a start that the tunic over his flank was smoldering and I scrabbled across the distance between us and slapped frantically at the smoking cloth. When he realized his peril he wormed out of the ruined, blood-soaked garment and flung it viciously across the room. He shuddered and drew up his knees and stared at the unmoving orc for a long minute.

"Is it dead?" I finally dared to whisper.

Halvard's throat bobbed. "I think so," he whispered back, and his eyes found mine in the gloom, wide and disbelieving. "It nearly killed you."

The dawning realization was starting to turn my innards to liquid. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely grasp my elbows as I hugged them across my chest. "I am glad you got there first," I said, and a half-hysterical giggle breezed past my lips.

"I am too," he said sincerely.

The orc lay with its black tongue bulging behind its ruined teeth and I found I could not look at it without fighting the urge to vomit. I looked carefully at Halvard instead, and beyond him to the door. "Why is it here?"

"I think it was wounded," he said. "It was limping. Maybe its fellows left it behind when they… when they came and raided." He let out a shuddery breath. "It was hiding in the storeroom out of the daylight." He glanced at me, down at the dagger that hung from my belt. "You could have stabbed it, you know."

My hand fell to the hilt and fingered it. "I forgot I had it," I murmured, feeling a twinge of embarrassment. Halvard would not have forgotten the weapon he carried. If he had forgotten, we would both now be dead.

But I did not have time to think on it further, for the sounds of running footsteps reached my ears. A voice called and another answered, rough and urgent, and then a familiar brawny silhouette filled the doorway behind Halvard.

I found myself scooting on my backside further into the shadows.

A curse. A pair of striding steps and my father reached Halvard and yanked him away from the carcass of the orc, putting himself between boy and fallen foe. Behind him Aragorn entered and swung his sword one-handed and severed the leering head with a blow that was almost casual. He did not look at us but melded silently into the shadows. My eyes flew to my father as he turned, setting Halvard determinedly aside.

My courage deserted me.

I twisted to my feet and bolted to the rear of the smithy and scrambled up the tilting ladder into the low loft. My father advanced. His eyes were perilously lit. He rammed his sword into its scabbard without looking down and reached for the ladder and I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for his hard hands to close on me.

But they did not. "I will not suffer you, boy, and you will not save her," came his low voice, barely controlled. "Now begone, or you will join her in her due."

My eyes flew open. Halvard had beat him to the ladder. My old nemesis stood between my father and me, his hands clenching nervously, but from above and behind I could see the determined set of his slim shoulders.

"No, sir," he said in a small voice. "I mean no disrespect, Captain, but you are not yourself."

"Stand aside, Halvard," my father said. His voice grated in his throat. "Do not make me move you."

Halvard's chin raised. My father's eyes narrowed. He closed the distance in a single stride and snatched Halvard high on the arm, jerked him roughly to the side, and then another, quieter voice spoke.

"Halbarad." The Chieftain stood behind him, his sword sheathed. There was no anger in his face, no warning in his voice, but my father stopped as if he had been struck. He released Halvard's arm and took a small step back and dragged his hand across his jaw.

"With me, lad," said Aragorn. Halvard limped to Aragorn's side and allowed himself to be ushered away with the Chieftain's hand on the nape of his neck. Aragorn directed Halvard out the door ahead of him and then paused and glanced back over his shoulder.

"You have yourself in hand?" he said.

For a breath I thought my father's rage would flare again, but instead he let his eyes fall closed. "She is my daughter," he said after a moment, "and I must deal with her willfulness myself."

"She is indeed your daughter," said Aragorn. He smiled slightly and shook his head and ducked out the door.

My father swiveled back to me. He stood for a moment with his face turned down, the fall of his heavy dark hair curtaining his face. Then he raised his eyes up to the loft and said levelly, "Make me fetch you and you will wish a horde of the Deceiver's minions had found you first."

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	10. I Have Crossed Him Enough

_A/N: I am extremely grateful to Cairistiona7, Linda Hoyland, and Levade for reading this thing chapter-by-chapter and giving me expert advice and encouragement._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>X<p>

_I Have Crossed Him Enough_

My father did not raise his voice, which alarmed me more than if he had thundered. When he said low and evenly, "Come down, Eluned," my body hurtled to obey despite the cautioning of my will.

My boot skidded on the first rung. The wood cracked and buckled and I scrambled to catch myself, barking my knuckles on the edge of the loft, but I could not recover. The ladder collapsed and with a yelp I followed it.

But I did not hit. I landed in his hard arms and before I could rally my wits he dropped to one knee and laid me belly-down across the other. I knew beyond a doubt what he intended and scrunched my eyes shut as I waited for his hand to fall.

It never did. He muttered an oath and tipped me further forward, the press of his elbow keeping me still. I felt a slice of cool air on the back of my leg as his hands found the tear in my hose and ripped it wider. Absently I noted that my boot was squelching with wetness. His breath drew in with a hiss and then he swept me upright and caught me in his arms, his palm packed stinging against the back of my leg.

"I ought to give you the hiding of your life!" he ground out, though his clenched teeth could not keep the tremor from his voice. He shook me, but it was little more than a jiggle. He would not loosen his hold enough to do a proper job of it. "What _idiocy_ possessed you to try and follow me?"

"I wanted to help!" I wailed into his coat. "I only wanted to help you. But then the wolves came, and I thought I had killed Sive, and Elrohir found us and then Halvard saved me from the goblin… Ada, it was horrible, it smelled like something dead…" I glanced over his shoulder and saw the carcass laying there, the head on the floor a mere pace away, and my resolve not to cry corroded completely. I gave a thick sob and felt him pull my head against his shoulder.

"You might have been slain," he said hoarsely. "A dozen times in the last days I might have lost you. Merciful Eru, thank you for sparing my _senseless_ child." He set me away and made me look at him. His eyes were flinty enough that my stomach flailed.

"Frighten me so again," he said, "and I care little _how_ old you are, I will wear you within an inch of your life."

I was nodding ferociously before he even finished; explicit agreement seemed to be the safest course of action. But his hard hand moved to my face, hard thumb smoothing and smoothing my cheekbone, gentling down my neck as if feeling for soundness. He brushed my snarled hair behind my ear and it was this, and not fear of his anger, that made me bury my face in the side of his neck. He let me cling for a minute or two, until my muscles relaxed and my churning stomach settled. I could hear his thundering heart gradually begin to slow; his hand on my hair seemed to steady us both. At last he rose, bearing me up with him. The compression of his hand against my wound stung fiercely but I did not struggle against it. I muffled my whimper in the collar of his shirt.

He carried me out into the evening light. A wind had risen and much of the stagnant smoke had cleared from the sky. The sun had rallied and was golden again; it chased long shadows into the east and warmed my bare neck briefly. My father did not let me lift my head as we passed the stable but pressed it firm against his shoulder and quickened his pace. His hand eased and I raised my eyes. We had reached the lean-to beside the Chieftain's cottage where an old cart had sat untouched for as long as I could remember, its broken axle jutting. Alongside the remaining wheel stood Elladan, straight and impassive, and Elrohir, whose face was dark with displeasure. Aragorn stood with them and turned as we approached. Cabor and Elladan's grey mare waited just beyond, heads high and eyes white at the crackling fire. Sive sat against the solid wall a little to the side, hugging her knees, and near her Halvard stood, pressing a wadded cloth to his cheek and staring at the ground.

My father set me on my unsteady feet beside them. He crossed to Elrohir and gripped his arm.

"Thank you, my lord," he said, his voice grating slightly. "Thank you for the life of my idiot child."

Elrohir grinned his radiant grin. "You have yet to hear the half of it, brother."

I could not stifle my groan. At the sound of it, Elrohir turned to Halvard and me, and his smile had vanished. His eyes seemed to glitter. "I seem to remember telling you to wait for the call."

"It came!" I said hastily. "We heard it through the trees!"

Aragorn glanced at the _peredhil_. They exchanged no words, but something must have passed between them. After a moment Elladan turned and jabbed his finger into Elrohir's chest.

"Follow me and I will hamstring you," he said in Sindarin, and took three long strides to the waiting horses. He ascended into his saddle like a puff of smoke and spun and departed. The grey horse cleared the wall as if it was knee-high and sped off to the east.

When he was gone, Elrohir rounded again and advanced on us. "There was no such call and I believe you know it well," he said. He stood before Halvard and I and seemed taller and more perilous than I had ever seen him. "Trusting you to heed me when left on your own was my own foolhardiness. But at the first sign of trouble the two of you go dashing off and leave your wounded companion to herself outside the wall?"

My head fell, but staring contritely at the ground did little to temper Elrohir's next words.

"Sive at least had sense enough to come and find us. More sense than the two of you—you nearly ended up as goblin-fodder. The pair of you are in dire need of—"

"They've been dealt with, Elrohir," interrupted Aragorn, who had been standing and listening impassively. From the corner of my eye I saw Halvard's head duck and his face go red and I wondered fleetingly if he had not been let off as lightly as I.

Elrohir stood for a moment looking skeptical. But then he put out his hand and caught Halvard's chin and tipped his claw-marked cheek up.

"A pretty orc-wound, for your first," he said. His eyes flicked to mine and then down at my torn, bloody hose. "Though Eluned's may take the medal." He released Halvard's face. "In the throat, I heard," he said, bumping the handle of the dagger at Halvard's hip and smiling thinly.

"Just like you and 'da told me," said Halvard.

Aragorn and my father had begun to converse in low tones, and when Elrohir turned away from us and joined them, Halvard followed. He pressed the cloth to his face again and spoke the question I had been too afraid to fixate on.

"How many have you found?"

My father turned to him. "There are no dead," he said. "They must have escaped, all of them."

I felt my legs go slack with relief. Halvard was not so easily reassured.

"But the smithy… there was a battle there. I found my father's crutch."

"He must have fled with the others," my father said. "Perhaps the first wave came and was repelled." He looked at Halvard with understanding in his eyes. "Do not lose heart, lad. Your father has it in him yet to account for an orcish head or two, and come away unscathed."

"How would they have known to flee?" I asked.

"Your anadar is a wily old fox. Not much passes within a league that he does not hear about. It is hard to spring a trap on old Dírhael." His eyes rose and met the Chieftain's. "Harder yet to catch him once he is away."

"We'll make it no farther than the waystation tonight," said Aragorn. "But dusk is nearly upon us and we must not tarry."

Elrohir collected Halvard and Sive and vanished inside the cottage with a cheerful command to gather food, and be quick about it. Aragorn lifted a leather bag off the ground by his feet and turned to me.

"May I take a look at your war-wound?" he asked. I nodded slowly, feeling a twinge of apprehension. My leg was beginning to ache fiercely and I did not want him to touch it. But he turned me away from him and crouched behind me as I stood with most of my weight on my sound leg. I felt a sting as he pulled the wool away and had to work very hard to be still when he searched the wound with gentle fingers.

"Not poisoned, but foul enough," he said, and my father rumbled acknowledgement. I twisted to try to see what Aragorn was doing but he straightened me with a hand on my nape. "Best not look while I clean it, little cousin," he said. "We can't have you going lightheaded, not with a long ride ahead."

My father disappeared around the side of the lean-to. "I won't go lightheaded," I said indignantly. I heard the sound of Aragorn rummaging and the _pop_ of a bottle being uncorked.

"Hmm," he said, and then the ache flared impressively. He had pressed a cloth into my knee-hollow and the bright sharp smell of liquor branded my nose. I could not hold back a string of yelps nor keep my foot from stamping. He cupped my knee with his free hand in a steadying way, and after a long searing minute removed the cleaning cloth. "That is good, for this is a handsome pike-wound, and you will have a scar."

"Truly?" I asked, grinning. The pain was dulling back down to a throb.

"You would have had a pair of them, one above the other," he said. "But your boot saved you." He pulled at the back of it. "Fortunately I'll be able to repair you with a bit of sewing. Your woolen, I fear, is beyond needlecraft."

"No matter, it is Lútha's," I said with a grimace, and then, more timidly, "Sewing?"

"I wish that we could patch it here," he said as he wrapped my knee, "and that you did not have an hour or two of jostling it ahead of you, but this will have to do until we are away to safer places." He tied off the bandage and gave me two quick pats on the outside of my leg as he stood. "No more fighting orcs until we can see to it further."

"It is awfully tight," I said, lifting at the uppermost edge with the corner of my thumb.

He brushed my hand away. "We need it to stay so."

The sun burst in a final golden glow. Elrohir, Halvard and Sive emerged from the Chieftain's cottage. Each bore a satchel bulging with supplies. When my father returned leading Morien and Sael we packed their saddles, and Cabor's. My father had already gathered a bundle of cloaks and blankets and retrieved his second sword. We did not try and salvage more belongings, nor did my father return to our house.

"Adar, what about our things?" I asked. He flipped the off-side stirrup up across the seat of the saddle and began to hang his spare sword on the buckles beneath it. "Ada—"

"There is nothing there we cannot do without," he said. His hands seemed more urgent than I was used to seeing them; they completed their task unfalteringly and jerked the stirrup back down and tugged the girth another notch tighter.

"But what about Naneth's chest? It has Daernaneth's embroidery in it. And Celwen's horses, she will be cross if we leave them. And Lossiel cannot sleep without her green blanket…"

"We cannot carry more than what we require. Your naneth will have collected everything she and your sisters need."

"But—"

My father bent and gripped both of my arms and made me look him squarely in the face. "We haven't the time, Lune," he said. His brow was drawn, his eyes intent. "You have to be brave now, and think like a Ranger. We must be gone from here before dark, and all of us will have to do without for a few days, understand?"

I nodded.

He straightened and boosted me onto Morien's back.

Aragorn mounted and pulled Halvard scrambling behind him. He checked the bay horse firmly when Sael tried to scatter sideways, and then Halvard was up and the horse licked his lips and snorted and relaxed.

"Wise, indeed," my father muttered. He flapped his coat at Sael, sent him skittering all over again, and Halvard had to snatch the cantle to keep from being left in midair.

Elrohir led Cabor alongside the cart. He sprang off the axle and into the saddle and my father handed Sive up behind him. At last Ada stepped into his own stirrup and I leaned back as far as I could to allow his foot over. Morien was weary; she was crusted with white beneath her jaw and down the insides of her legs, but she seemed to catch a new stamina as we trotted for the north gate. She bowed her powerful neck and carried her feathery feet high and I glanced across to see Elrohir had Cabor collected similarly, and even with his unlikely burden the Elven horse traveled like he was mustering for war. The unbraided half of his mane lifted on the wind like a black standard.

We departed the village and slipped into the trees. The three horses traveled abreast where they were able, thinning into single-file when the trees grew thick but flaring as soon as the trail widened again. The adults were wary and listening; I could tell by their swiveling heads and the way they scarcely spoke, and then only in murmurs. Once I tried to ask my father how far we had to go and he smacked my leg lightly and told me to hush.

They pushed the horses into a long ground-eating trot, and after the sun went down we did not halt again. As the dark gathered they stopped conversing completely. The horses seemed to share their urgency; even flighty Sael traveled steadily and did not waste his breath on snorting.

I found myself too weary to be frightened but too uncomfortable to sleep. A trot is not a lulling gait at the best of times, and especially not riding behind the saddle instead of in it. So instead of listening for danger or drifting off, I fretted. I worried over my mother and the distance she would have to travel, and how exhausted she already was by the hefty babe she bore. I wondered if there was someone strong enough to carry little Lossiel when she grew too tired to walk. I thought perhaps Iolanthe could for a distance, but my eldest sister was slim, and short for a Dúnedain maiden. Lútha would pass her by in a scant year or two.

I did not allow myself to imagine any scenarios but those that had all of them together, and all of them well.

At one point Elrohir and Sive branched off out of sight. I barely breathed for the four or five minutes they were away, despite my father and Aragorn continuing on without pause. At last I saw the paler shadows of Elrohir's sleeves as he emerged and drew alongside Sael. He dropped to a walk and Morien joined the other horses.

"Past midnight last," Elrohir whispered. "Seventy-nine. They will make for the fastness beyond the East Road."

A pause. I was tallying frantically in my head, but long before I could reach a merest estimation, Aragorn said, "Seven short."

There was no answer, only grim silence.

"We cannot know for certain in the dark," my father said at last. "If there is another cairn we might miss it, and even Elrohir cannot track with no moon. Neither can we push until the dawn."

"Elladan will be furious if he returns to finds an empty waystation," said Elrohir softly. "And I have crossed him enough these past days to tide me for a yen at least. I know this is your command, Aragorn, and your people we pursue, but he was not amiss in asking us to meet him there. Dírhael has them well away, and there is naught we can do for them with drained horses and weary children. We will catch them on the morrow whether we tarry or not."

"Then we will go to ground in the old Harfoot burrow," said Aragorn, "to take our rest and tend our wounded. I will travel easier in the daylight no matter the cost to our need for swiftness. And our need for rest is greater even than that."

We left the main path. I could not say how far we had ridden when at last we halted; the trees were too thick to see the stars but it seemed like an hour or more before Aragorn at the lead drew up again. The horses took their ease. They slung their heads low and each gave a long sigh. Morien cocked a hind foot and stood crookedly.

My father threw a leg over her neck and landed silently. He chivvied me into the seat of his saddle and handed me the reins. "Stay with Elrohir," he whispered. I heard the rasp of his sword drawing, and another as the Chieftain joined him. Elrohir pressed Cabor close to Morien and reached across the space between them and laid a hand on my father's saddle-bow. I did not need him to tell me that he meant for me to make no sound.

An owl called. Elrohir's hand left the saddle and nudged my hip, and I twisted across Morien and slid to the ground. My knee tugged and buckled as I landed and I had to catch a handful of black mane to keep myself from crumpling completely. Sive swung down on Elrohir's arm and touched my back until I released my hold and slowly straightened. Her hands joined mine in feeling for the buckles of the saddle; she turned her back against Morien's barrel and levered her shoulder under the girth to loosen it. I slipped around the other side and fastened the girths to the skirts on their loop, and then my father was beside me to pull the saddle free. I started to slide the bridle off but his hands stopped mine.

"Go inside," he said softly. "I'll tend them from here."

I hesitated, suddenly loath to leave him. I could see no building to enter and did not wish to wander through the dark without him, even knowing the others were near. He turned to see I had not obeyed him, but instead of telling me again he pulled me against him and dropped a rough kiss on the crown of my head. It seemed like a long time before he turned me loose again.

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	11. Taking Your Tending Like a Man

_A/N: Three wonderful ladies gave generously of their time and experience to help me get this thing presentable. I'd be delighted if they ended up getting a review or two from this shout-out. Cairistiona, Linda Hoyland, and Levade. They write really, really excellent stuff._

_Thank you to everyone who's been reading! Here's a nice, sappy chapter for those of you with a soft spot for h/c ;D_

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>XI<br>_Taking Your Tending Like a Man_

I stayed with my father while he took a length of rope and picketed Morien by a forefoot. He handed me the lighter satchel from his saddle and lifted the larger one and nudged me ahead with a hand between my shoulder blades.

A narrow door in a brushy hillside appeared. It was so dark that I had not seen that the ground rose no more than fifty feet from where we had left the horses. The doorway was low and my father had to stoop to enter, and then we traveled through a short tunnel and ducked through a second door. When I raised my head, I saw we were in a room hollowed out into the hillside. Bracing the ceiling was a single heavy beam held up by a supporting pillar of oak, and beyond it stood a crude table and a pair of tree stumps for chairs. At the very back, Aragorn crouched beside a tiny stone fireplace with flint and firesteel in hand. Already he had lit one candle and stood it beside him on the dirt floor, and by the time Ada had entered behind me and shrugged out of his cloak, a second and third cast guttering shadows on the root-studded walls. Sive and Halvard came behind my father, and Elrohir behind them. The first two looked too weary to startle at the sight of the little burrow under the hill.

"A far cry from your ada's guest wing," my father told Elrohir, dealing him an affable, backhanded swat to the stomach.

"I am just as pleased to see it tonight," Elrohir answered, grinning and rubbing his belly. "Even if it is more fitting for hobbits than _peredhil_."

"A more considerate _peredhel_ would not have spoiled my pretty patchwork," said Aragorn. He set a pair of waterskins beside the table, and his leather bag near them. From the latter he pulled a ream of canvas and rolled it open upon the tabletop. The glint of instruments in the candlelight made my stomach start to curl.

"You should be more concerned with sleeping than needlework," said Elrohir. "Particularly tears that are already knitting. It will keep until the morning."

"I fear there is one which will not," said the Chieftain, and his sympathetic eyes fell on me.

I had to battle the urge to slip behind my father and hide my face in the back of his jerkin.

Aragorn took a seat on the stump and reached into his leather bag and pulled out a square of cloth. From his canvas he slid a slim knife and laid the cloth on the table and carved a crescent in the center of it. He hooked a finger at me. I would not have gone to him but for my father's insistent hand in my back.

"I will show you," he said when I stood at his shoulder. "The pike-head caught you like so…" Here he crooked one finger, as if his second knuckle were a knee, and used another to slice behind it. "The wound is not too deep, but there is a piece of skin much like this…" He picked up the scrap of cloth and lifted the dangling flap with a fingertip. "If I do not stitch it back over the wound it will be very difficult to keep clean. The loose skin will die away and leave a gaping scar." He laid down the cloth again. "I will not force you if you will not let me," he said quietly. "It will sting, and I have little to dull it."

I looked up at my father. The corners of his eyes were tight, and for a moment I thought he would not decide for me. But then his hand rose to my shoulder and tightened just enough to be uncomfortable, and I knew he was remembering the sight of Halvard and I beside the dead goblin, or the sight of my wound when he had torn away my hose.

"She will let you," he said.

Aragorn nodded and began to clean his hands.

Elrohir filled one hand with bread from a satchel and headed for the door. For a moment Halvard watched him, and then took his own ration and followed. Sive had already settled on the dirt floor and pulled her arms inside her sleeves. My father went to a hollow in the wall I had not noticed before. Wedged into it was a pair of shelves that held a box of candles, a smattering of mismatched dishes and cookware, and a stack of rough woolen blankets. With the whole stack balanced on his arm he went over to Sive and shook one out and flung it across her shoulders. He crouched and tucked it around her feet, speaking something too low for me to hear. He smoothed the hair off her forehead. She stretched on her side and was asleep before he could cross the room to rejoin us.

I sank to the floor and tugged off my boots, hissing as the motion pulled my wound beneath its wrapping. Aragorn had spoken the truth; the back of the left one was torn and flopping, the hose that lay under it puckered and snagged. I twisted my foot to see it better and decided it was beyond even Lútha's skill to mend. I reached behind my knee and found the hole beneath the bandage and ripped it until the lower half of the woolen came off in my hand.

"You could have unpointed it and taken it off ," said Aragorn wryly. He had watched my performance with mirth in his eyes. "You'll have no stocking inside your boot tomorrow."

I held up the torn piece of hose. "I did not think of that," I admitted.

"No matter," he said. "You young savages run barefooted ten months out of the year as it is." He patted the table in front of him. I backed up to it and laid my palms on the surface and hiked my backside onto the edge. I sat like that for a moment, my feet swinging, and he waited patiently while I sorted my thoughts.

"I wish it was winter," I said at last. "Then I could numb it with snow."

"I wish that, too," he said. "If ever you take a pike-wound again, you'll know to time it better."

From his post at the foot of the table, my father growled, "If ever you take a pike-wound again, I may finish the job."

Aragorn ignored him, an act for which I was immediately grateful. I was nervous enough without Ada huffing and rumbling and leveling threats. Shakily I met the Chieftain's eye. "I'm afraid I won't be able to stay still."

"We'll go as slowly as you need to. I have known grown men who need respite between stitches. Elladan sulks like a little boy whenever he has to sit still for a healer."

I felt my eyebrows spring up. "He never."

"Indeed he does," said Aragorn solemnly. "If he were here you could show him a thing or two about taking your tending like a man."

I was not so foolish to think that I would ever be able to show Lord Elladan anything. Even so, the thought of him sulking was absurd enough to distract me from my nervousness. I swung my feet up, and when Aragorn had unwrapped the bandage, I stretched out and rolled over and propped my chin on my folded arms.

I watched the candle in front of my nose drip wax on the tabletop and struggled to think distant, diverting thoughts. Silently I counted to a hundred in Sindarin, and then again by threes, but faltered somewhere around forty-two and had to beg for my first reprieve. I felt vaguely sick and thought that the feel of any more tugging might turn my stomach inside out. I buried my face in the crook of my elbow.

A warm hand settled below my knee. "You are a brave girl," said Aragorn. I sniffed wetly and did not believe him, and in the end my father had to steady me with confining hands on either side of where the Chieftain worked. The moment the last stitch was tied and clipped he swept me off the table and onto his lap as if I were no bigger than Lossiel. He held me tight against his chest while Aragorn coated my stitches with thick salve and bound my knee again.

When he finished I mopped my face on the sleeve of my tunic and said, "I do not think I will take another pike-wound."

"See that you don't," said my father, but his rough kiss above my ear ruined his sternness.

Aragorn sat crouched on his heels. He cleaned the salve from his hands on a scrap of cloth and then let it hang between his knees as he regarded me. His bright eyes shadowed briefly, as if his thoughts had scattered somewhere far away from the little dug-out waystation. Then they cleared again and he shook his dark hair and rose and flipped the rag to the tabletop.

"I will relieve Elrohir," he said. "He likely has not slept for some days."

My father shifted me in his arms and stood. "I believe the watch is mine," he said. He carried me across the room and laid me down beside Sive.

"He has not," I mumbled. The pain behind my knee had dulled and fatigue was beginning to lap insistently behind my eyes.

"Who has not what, love?" He shook a blanket over Sive and I.

"He has not slept. Elrohir. You should make him…" A yawn interrupted me. Ada pushed back my hair.

"We will make him," he said. He patted my hip through the blanket and Sive turned in her sleep and buried her face against my neck, and then I sighed and succumbed as well.

-o0o-

Pain woke me. It washed down the back of my leg in waves and I whimpered and shifted onto my belly. The low voices from across the room ceased. Footsteps crossed the earthen floor but I did not move again. I kept my eyes shut tightly.

A hand drew up the blanket and smoothed it down my back. It settled again on the nape of my neck, brushing my hair aside to lie warm and callused on the skin there, and when it lifted the waves had become ripples. The voices resumed, and I had awakened enough by then to discern them in that small space.

"I find I have little stomach for repairing orcish handiwork on small children," the Chieftain said quietly in Sindarin. "Sweet Lady, a fingerbreadth higher and she would have been hamstrung."

"Even Adar has no stomach for it," said another voice. Elrohir's. "And he has seen times when the need was not so blessedly rare."

I turned my head slightly and cracked an eye, the light from the single candle feathery through my lashes. The Chieftain was settling back against the far wall, and I realized it had been he who had come to soothe me when I stirred. He sat and drew up one knee and slung his forearm over it. In his hand he held an untouched apple, but he seemed to stare straight through it. Shadow poured in pools beneath his cheekbones and in the corners of his somber eyes, and though the light from the candle was warm, it did not drive the pallor from his face. He looked frighteningly weary.

Near him Elrohir stretched on his good side, propped up on one elbow. Idly he spun his knife between his fingers, the small one he carried secreted in his boot. After a moment he flicked it to stick neatly in the dirt and rolled onto his back and hooked an arm beneath his head for a pillow. "Eat the apple, Estel," he said. His eyes were half-closed. "Your stomach will fare better with something besides regret to gnaw upon."

Aragorn twisted the apple in his hand. "Regret sometimes turns to wisdom, if gnawed long enough."

"Or to bitterness," was the murmured reply. "Have it out if you intend to, otherwise brood quietly and leave us others to our sleep."

For a few long moments I thought the Chieftain would do just that. Elrohir's chest heaved once and it seemed he had drifted away, but then Aragorn turned his face from the candlelight and said softly into the dark, "I should have known it for the diversion it was,"

Elrohir's eyes snapped open. He levered himself upright and faced Aragorn. "And you should be all-seeing, perhaps, and able to be in seven places at once," he said, and his tone was not gentle. "And while you are at it, sprout wings and breathe fire. And cleanse the world of plague and pestilence with a flick of your hand."

Aragorn's head fell back against the wall. "I should have left Rangers behind," he said. "There were none to guard them but half-grown boys and old men."

"Old men who were spilling goblin offal when you were still tottering after us with your backside in swaddling."

"Do not be flippant, Elrohir."

"Then you do not be pigheaded. We are at war, Aragorn. This is not some private duel for which you alone have thrown down the gauntlet. I am growing weary of reminding you that you cannot hold up the sky on your own shoulders."

"I have no desire to hold up the sky. I wish only to keep my folk alive, and the children of my people safely away from the weapons of our enemies."

"If you have an foolish child, you can restrain him, or keep him locked away so the consequences of his stupidity do not kill him," Elrohir said sharply. "But when he is a man he will still be foolish, and will get himself killed anyway. Were you the greatest healer in Arda, you still could not cure childish idiocy. You are not so old to have forgotten that only grave mistakes and hard lessoning are remedy for that."

"And if the mistake is so grave there can be no lessoning after?"

"Such was not so, this time."

"Not for the child, perhaps."

"You are only sniffing in circles, and I am beginning to find this conversation vexing. Why do you berate yourself over her fate? She will heal, and Halbarad will shackle her to her loom until she is old enough to marry off. Both she and the boy came away with only a few scrapes and a tale to tell their fellows. How is that a thing to mourn?"

Aragorn flicked his finger through the candle flame, causing it to sputter and dance. "Seven short," he said softly, and at his words I saw Elrohir sag a little, as if his vexation had fled and taken his bristling with it.

"Not the child, then," he murmured, and then he sighed and shifted forward on the dirt floor and grasped the front of the Chieftain's jerkin and gave it a shake. "You do not _know_," he said with an edge of fierceness. "They might have been separated, or fled another way. They might be wandering still in the wood. Would Dírhael not have left word at the cairn if they had taken casualty?"

"Perhaps he lacked the time."

Elrohir released the front of Aragorn's jerkin with a little shove. "And if there are? If seven of your people lie dead in shallow graves somewhere along the way? Will flogging yourself with fault bring honor to them, or peace to their families? Will it keep the next raid from tolling so grievously?"

"If I am wise enough to foresee it before it comes to pass, then yes."

"Your grandmother is foresighted. Your grandfather has fought invasions since before your mother was born. Would you call them fools, then, for being caught unawares this time?"

"Of course not."

"Well, then."

"But the charge is not theirs. I wonder often if these folk would be safer with Isildur's Heir away again in the far countries, where the rumor of him is only that, and the Enemy's thought might be drawn from the Dúnedain of the North."

"By careful vigilance, even in the North it is but a rumor still," said Elrohir. "If the truth had been found out, that Valandil's line endures and bides in Eriador unbroken, it would not be a swarm of goblins come in the night to burn and spoil, but all the hordes of Mordor, with the Nine at the vanguard. You know this, Aragorn. Orcs will raid purely for their lust for ruin. Sometimes there is no impetus behind their hatred but hatred itself. "

Aragorn did not answer this, but from where I lay I could see his face as he stared into the shadows. After a moment of heavy silence Elrohir slackened onto his back again and cast an arm across his eyes. "Eat the cursed apple, stubborn boy," he said in a tired voice. "And if not for your own sake, absolve yourself for mine. I have not the strength this night to batter sense into you."

"You have not had the strength for forty years," said Aragorn, smiling slightly. He buffed the apple on the breast of his jerkin and took a bite out of the shiniest spot.

"Remind me of those words in a day or two, Dúnadan," said Elrohir, his eyes closing completely. "And I shall feed them back to you."

The Chieftain finished his apple, core and all. He sat for a moment, twisting the stem, and then he leaned forward and fitted his hand against Elrohir's broken ribs.

Elrohir's hand flew up and caught Aragorn's wrist. "_No_," he said, in a tone one might direct at a toddler reaching for a hot stove. "You have spent yourself enough already, lessening the child's pain. Exhausting yourself trying to lessen mine will not assuage your guilt." He flung the Chieftain's hand away. "Elladan will reach us by morning," he added, as if the thought had just occurred to him. "And if you are still awake nursing it I will let him string you up by your heels."

"You are full to the brim with threats tonight," said Aragorn. He slid down the wall and lay flat on his back, his fingers laced over his belly. Elrohir answered with a hum, but he was more relaxed than I had ever seen him and did not speak again.

The floor of the waystation was uneven and smelled of must. Sive slept with her hands pulled under her chin and her bony elbow needled my ribs. The hollow behind my knee still felt heavy and uncomfortable, and just as tender was my pride at Elrohir's words about _imprudence_ and _childish idiocy_. But at last I decided that none of this mattered. The Chieftain had given of his own strength to ease my ache. If he with all his cares could find rest beneath my father's watch, then I would not rouse him from it further. I snuggled closer to Sive's warm body and let the tide of sleep wash over me again.

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	12. They Will Find No Steadfastness In You

_A/N: Wow, guys, over fifty reviews! That just boggles my mind. Thank you so much!_

_Thank you especially to Eliason who left such a sweet and generous guest review. I really appreciate it!_

_Cairisitiona, Linda Hoyland and Levade all helped (and continue to help) with this story, and I am very, very grateful to all three of them._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>XII<p>

_Your Friends Will Find No Steadfastness In You_

I woke to raised voices from beyond the round door. Sive and I were alone in the room and we bolted simultaneously towards the back of it, disoriented and tangled in the blankets and tripping over one another in our hasty retreat. My wound tugged and flamed in protest and I yelped and lurched and landed hard on one hip, rolled sitting, and scrambled backwards on my palms and my rear.

Halvard burst through the door, cradling a heap of branches as high as his chin. He crossed the room and dropped them clattering beside the earthen fireplace and turned to Sive and I where we were plastered wide-eyed against the further wall.

"Don't just sit there," he snapped. "Lord Elladan has returned. Come and help!"

We followed him slowly, both of us moving stiffly and still blinking off the fog of deep sleep. We emerged into a dull dawn. Through the leaves above us I could see the low sky bellying with black clouds. The air was shrill with a biting wind the trees did little to buffer.

Riders had come. Lord Elladan bore on his horse before him a slim, slouching figure that he held against his chest with one arm. He drew up and the Chieftain and my father took his burden and carried it a distance away and eased it to the ground. There was bright blood on the face beneath the hood, which fell back from grey hair and a small head. Wrinkles, baggy eyes shut loosely, wizened cheekbones too pale, and more blood on the front of a faded brown kirtle…

The old woman looked dead. Even so, I blinked with relief. I did not know her.

"When?" the Chieftain said tightly. He pulled aside the heavy blue cloak that wrapped her and lowered his ear to the thin chest.

"Eight hours ago, or more," said Elladan. Behind him were two others and I recognized Caradoc in the shadow of his hood. The other man was clad in rough homespun and bore neither sword nor bow. He slid awkwardly to the ground and hurried to where the old wounded woman lay on the ground. He fell to his knees beside her.

"She took an arrow," he said. "Shot as we skirted the village. She should not have been there, my lord, it should have been one of us men, but you know how she is. She insisted she could lead us on a swift path through the trees..."

"Peace, Bôr," said the Chieftain. "She has only fainted. Where are Meldes and the children?"

"They are coming behind," said the man. "Coming with Handir's family, and some of the Rangers. Others joined with us as well, my lord, woodsmen from the Southsward. I would not have left them, but young Caradoc has taken a wound, and Lord Elladan would not let me bear Grandmother. I'm not the best rider, my lord, and he carried her with more care than I would have been able. We know little of such wounds, lord, Mel has no stomach for them, and Lord Elladan bid us bring her to you. They ambushed us near the ruins south of the old west trail. It was horrible, my lord, that boy screaming and the arrows were flying and we knew when the sun went down they would be bold enough to fall on us in earnest, and with Grandmother wounded—"

"Peace," said Aragorn again, with a touch of impatience this time. "We will tend her within and you can tell me more. Can you bear her?"

"Yes, my lord," said Bôr, touching his forelock. He hefted his grandmother, and staggering slightly, disappeared into the station.

"Slain?" asked the Chieftain in Elvish as he passed Elladan.

"Two when we departed," Elladan answered. "I will join Elrohir in the watch." He did not wait for reply but jumped his horse into a canter. As he passed the blue cloak where it lay puddled on the ground he fell to the side and snatched it up one-handed without slowing. He twisted straight in the saddle and vanished into the trees.

Aragorn came alongside Caradoc where he sat his chestnut mare.

"Iarladh and Feridir are coming behind us," Caradoc began before Aragorn could speak, "with refugees from the south corner. Coru comes from the east. He is near to a day behind us—some would not leave without their stock. We came into the orcs just before dusk. They retreated when Iarladh sounded the warning call, but fell upon us again in the dark. We could not…" He paused, seeming to collect himself, and when he spoke again his voice shook slightly. "They killed a boy, and an old man, and that scarce hours after we came upon the supply wagon…"

Aragorn peeled back a bloody rip in Caradoc's breeches to examine a wound in the side of his thigh.

"We would have been overrun had Elladan not come to reinforce us," Caradoc said. He winced as the Chieftain probed and extracted a splinter of something with a sharp little tug. "One of the woodsman's boys wandered after a goat. We did not realize he was missing until the screams started…" He fell silent for a moment. "The father nearly tried to kill us when we held him back from following."

If Aragorn had thoughts on this, he stored them away unspoken. "There is more I cannot reach," he said, giving Caradoc's wound one final look. "I must tend the old wife but you will bide until I am finished."

He turned to leave but Caradoc bent and caught his shoulder. "How many, sir?"

"We have not a number," the Chieftain said. "Not a sure one, but we found none in the ruin. I am sorry," he went on more quietly. "He was a brave lad. I was proud of him already."

Caradoc nodded tightly but did not speak.

"Elrohir was with him at the last," said Aragorn.

I saw some of the rigidness leave Caradoc's shoulders. "For that I am glad," he said. "And our mother will be as well, to hear he was not alone when he departed."

Aragorn cuffed Caradoc's knee gently and then turned and strode to the dugout door. I felt a hand fall on my shoulder and turned to see my father. "Wood and water," he said to the three of us. "The skins are near the saddles. Don't go too far looking, and hurry back. The Chieftain will need both in abundance."

-o0o-

Dry branches were scarce and we had to spread out and wander through the trees to find them. My knee was hot and tender and my bare heel in my boot began quickly to chafe and I ached all over from a restless night spent on a hard dirt floor. It was not long before I found a log and sat down on it with a _plunk_. I had gathered only a few dry sticks and I cast them into the ferns with a bit more force than was strictly necessary.

Sive hunted a distance away, and her arms were nearly full. She flitted through the trees and under low branches as quick as a wren, her limp all but gone. She scarcely made a sound as she moved.

"Are you going to help or not?" said Halvard from behind me. I turned to see him standing there, a few hefty branches balanced in the crook of one elbow.

"I cannot carry much," I said primly. "I am not supposed to strain my stitches."

Halvard's practiced expression of disdain began to disfigure the corner of his mouth. "Collecting wood will not strain you," he said. "I think you are just shirking the work."

"I am _not_," I said lowly. "I have a _wound_."

"A _skin_ wound," he said. "Elrohir killed three wargs and rescued us and led us home with broken ribs and his side ripped wide-open. I think you can gather wood with a little scratch on your leg."

"It is not a scratch!" I said. I would have leapt to my feet but was wary of the sting it would cause me. I stood slowly instead. "It took twenty-seven stitches, and the Chieftain said he has seen grown men cry over wounds like mine!"

This was, perhaps, a bit of a liberty on what the Chieftain had actually said, but I felt I needed the elaboration at that moment.

"He did not," said Halvard.

"Ask Sive! She was there when he said it."

I did not think he would hound the truth so relentlessly, and felt a flare of anxiety when he called out to Sive, "Did the Chieftain tell Eluned that he has seen grown men cry over wounds like hers?"

Sive came over and dropped her double-armload of sticks. She looked uneasy, her eyes flitting between Halvard and I.

"I do not remember," she said in a small voice. "I was mostly asleep."

"There," I said, my own voice a little thready. "She was mostly asleep. But he said it. And he said I was brave."

Halvard turned the full force of his attention on Sive. She squirmed just a little, her hands fisting at the hem of her tunic.

"Did you hear what he said?" asked Halvard.

Sive winced. I could see the battle going on behind her wide grey eyes. "He did say she was brave," she said at last.

Halvard raised an eyebrow. I could almost hear the word unspoken in the air. _And…?_

"He did not say they cried," she nearly whispered. "You made that up, Eluned."

Anger leapt like acid into my throat. "I did not!" I shouted. "He said that even grown men need respite!"

"But not that they cry," said Halvard. He looked disgustingly smug. "You are probably the one who cried. Did your ada have to sit on you, Eluned? Did they tie you down like a sheep that needs its feet trimmed?"

"Shut your mouth!" I yelled. I was very near to tears. "I would not have even had a wound if you had not been crying about your father dead in the storeroom! And you…" I rounded on Sive. "You are supposed to be _my_ friend! You always listen to Halvard and do what he says as if he's the Chieftain himself! And you shirked more work with your sprained ankle… riding Cabor and limping around. You acted like you'd broken your blasted leg!"

Sive's mouth became very thin and her eyes very bright. She stooped slowly and gathered her wood.

"You are right, Eluned," she said in a calm voice when she straightened again. "I do listen to Halvard. Halvard does not do stupid things and try to blame everyone else when they go horribly wrong. Halvard does not throw fits like a baby when he does not get his way. And _Halvard_ looks after his friends like friends are supposed to. He even looks after _you_, and he likes you about as much as I do right now. Which isn't enough to blow a smoke-ring at." She raised her chin and turned smartly as a soldier and marched towards the station with her shoulders thrown back.

"Well you can just _marry_ him, then, if you like him so much!" I yelled as she drew away. "And I wish you _would_ have broken your leg! Then I wouldn't have to see you following me like a whipped puppy every time I turn around!"

She kept walking and did not look back.

Halvard raked me with a last disgusted look, and followed.

I scraped up one of my branches and flung it at his back with a little screech of fury. It flew wide and whirred off into the bushes and Halvard looked over his shoulder long enough to say, "You missed."

I stomped one foot hard and my wound burst into flame and I whimpered and sank back onto my log. I sat for a long time, hugging my knee and feeling gingerly at the edges of my self-pity where it sat emptily in my chest, like the hole left after a tooth falls out, before the new one grows in. I very nearly convinced myself that I would not weep a single tear if Sive and Halvard both pranced merrily off a riverbank and drowned in the rushing Hoarwell.

My father found me there. I saw him coming and felt consoled, readied myself to let him salve my wounded pride. I made room for him on the log beside me but he did not sit. He stopped and stood in front of me looking down, and the dangerous light in his eye cured me abruptly of the desire to rise and bury my face in his chest.

"We are long overdue a discussion, youngster."

"We are _not_," I said, quiet and carefully. I did not intend for him to hear me but once again I underestimated the keenness of his ears.

"You are very near the edge, Eluned. Would you like to push me a bit further, and see where it gets you?"

"No," I muttered.

"What was that?"

"I don't want to." This time I was certain to iron the petulance out of my tone before I spoke.

"I am cheered to see you retain the merest shred of sense."

I studied my lap. After what seemed like a long moment he sighed deeply and took a seat beside me on my log.

"What's got into you?" he said. "It seems you're doing your best lately to stir up as much mischief as you can. If I can even call it mischief—real trouble is more like."

"Nothing has got into me," I said, and the sullenness had crept back in.

"You are always so insolent and unruly? I know I am very often away, Lune, but I would think your mother might at least have mentioned I had sired a little dragon spawn."

I could not tell if he was teasing, and elected the safe road of silence.

"I told you the morning I left that you were not to follow me," he said after a short pause, and the lilt of good-humor was gone from his voice.

"I did not promise."

"Since when you I need your oath to have your obedience?"

I diligently avoided his eyes. "You don't."

"It seems perhaps I do," he said. "If your spoken word alone is so untrustworthy."

His statement clouted me. No doubt he intended it to. My people live by the integrity of their word. A Dúnedain man who speaks a vow of fealty will fight and die by it. The Rangers swear no oath of blood, nor by their children nor their fathers. They swear by their own life or death, and their spoken words are enough. Enough for the Chieftain to depend upon. We are taught from the cradle of the gravity of words. Taught to do as we say we will. _Your yes need be yes, else your family and your friends will find no steadfastness in you._

Our words are our sacred trust, our pledge of honor. Violated once and forever desecrated.

And I had manipulated and deceived my way through the last few days as if I had been brought up by savages, instead of the last great line of the Lords of Númenor. Shame crept like a cold spreading stain.

And he was not finished with me yet.

"Sive is younger than you," he said. "She follows you, looks up to you, and that is no trifling charge. It is no light thing to be the eldest. You should have been looking after her and instead you very nearly got both of you killed."

I sniffed loudly. I could feel my face scrunching against the threat of tears. Another heavy pause.

Then, "Elrohir tells me you are defiant and hotheaded."

Beneath the shame I felt a spark of betrayal, and dared to mutter, "Elrohir is a tattletale."

"He also tells me you are brave, and quick to cool again, and suggested perhaps I merely skin you instead of killing you outright."

"That is generous of him to suggest," I said darkly.

"It is indeed. And you shall thank him for it, and beg his forgiveness for the trouble you caused him."

My eyes flew to his. "I will not beg his forgiveness after he has called me those things, and tried to get me in trouble!"

"You mind your tongue," my father said sharply, his eyes darkening a shade. "He tried no such thing, but stood up on your behalf. Lord Elrohir is unpretentious, and it is easy to forget his station and his lineage, but you _will_ ask his forgiveness, and you will speak of him with respect. He is your elder, not your playmate."

His words made me feel very childish, and caused no small measure of resentment, though I was careful to hide it. I stuffed it away beneath my ribcage where I could coax it out to nurse as soon as I was alone again.

He did not speak for a moment or two. I did not look at him, but I could tell he was thinking. Thinking perhaps of what to rebuke me with next.

"You quarreled with your friends," he said at last.

It was not a question, and not what I had been expecting.

"They are not my friends," I muttered.

"You must be right, if your fellowship is so easily broken over one little spat."

"It was not a spat."

"A skirmish, then?"

"It was not a skirmish, either."

"You are contrary, Eluned. And I am growing weary of it."

I ground my teeth to try to keep my chin from trembling.

"Were you letting them do all the work?" he asked quietly. His eyes bored into the side of my face, and I became suddenly very interested in the lacework of the fern-leaves waving gently near my knee. My heavily-bandaged, throbbing knee.

"My leg hurt," I said softly, and before the words were clear of my mouth I heard how petty they sounded, how thin and selfish. I wished immediately that I could snatch them back and swallow them forever.

He did not answer. When the silence stretched between us like a brassy wire I at last looked up at him, and saw disappointment etched deeply in his forehead and around his mouth.

"I know it does," he said at last, and sighed a long sigh, and rose. "I am sorry, love. Perhaps I should not have sent you fetching. The Chieftain can give you something for the pain, now that it is morning and we can make a fire." He laid his hand on my hair. "I will carry you, if you are too sore to walk."

He said the last kindly, but I could hear a thread of sadness in the lowest layer of his voice.

"I can walk," I mumbled, and he petted me once and bent to gather up my sticks. All through the trees I wanted to say something, to find the words that would wash away the look of resignation that dimmed his eyes.

"I can help carry it," I said when we had walked a hundred yards or so.

He squeezed my shoulder. "You had best not," he said gently. "We have your wound to think about."

It was, perhaps, the most disgracing answer he could have given me.

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><p><em>Thank you so much for reading!<em>


	13. I Fear Thy Wounds Will Overcome Thee

_A/N: Cairistiona7, Linda Hoyland, and Levade have my undying gratitude for tackling the beta-work of this project for me. Ever read any of their stories? You won't be disappointed (but I will be, if you read their stuff and don't leave them a review...)_

_The feedback I've received for this story is just wonderful and humbling and I cannot thank everyone enough. And to Hideypidey, who left yet another incredibly kind and encouraging review-thank you so much! Yours were some of the sweetest compliments I've ever had and I feel like a name check is the very least I can do for such generous comments!_

_Disclaimer still applies._

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><p>XIII<p>

_I Fear Thy Wounds Will Overcome Thee_

As we approached the station, the door sprang open. Halvard darted out with a startled expression on his face and a basin of sloshing water in his hands. He poured the water out in the grass and was scurrying back for the door when my father said his name and halted him.

"Is there trouble, lad?" he asked. "Has the old woman departed?"

"She has revived," said Halvard. "I must fetch Lord Elladan for the Chieftain—he said to make haste!"

"Eluned will return the basin," my father said, and after Halvard had handed it off without meeting my eye and hurried away, Ada turned to me.

"You will offer the Chieftain whatever aid he requires," he said. "And if I hear of you shirking—"

"You will not!" I said hastily.

"I had better not," he rumbled. "And you will be polite to Mistress Gelluives."

I was a little offended that he would think I'd be anything else to a perfect stranger, and an elder at that, but I was wise enough to not show it. He nudged me towards the door and I hobbled through it, up the tunnel, and into the little earthen room.

Rushes were lit. Even so it took my eyes a moment to adjust; in the dim I did not see the candle flying at me until it struck me on the cheek. I yelped and ducked to the side and looked wildly around for my attacker, but saw no enemies. Only Bôr and the Chieftain near the table in the center of the room, and Mistress Gelluives sitting up upon it. She was battling away her grandson's hands as he tried to calm her—or restrain her—and her white hair was wild and her eyes crooked with fury and she screeched at the sight of me cowering near the door.

"She is no lord!" she shrieked in Sindarin, her voice parchment-thin and rough as a rasp, but profanely loud in that little space. "Get her out, get her out, I bade none but the lord attend me! I shall have no other but he!"

Her grandson was beside himself, ducking her flailing hands and pleading with her in the Common tongue, "Please, Daernaneth, please calm yourself, your wound, you must not strain yourself—"

"Do not speak to me in that heathen tongue!" she shouted in Elvish. Aragorn was sitting on one of the stumps near the table; he held a roll of bandage loosely in one hand and wore a resigned expression. The shrieking continued. "Get that ugly child out of my chamber, I shall have no other but the lord attend me! He alone knows how to address an old woman with courtesy…"

"He is coming, Daernana," Bôr assured her. "But you must be calm, you are gravely injured—"

She swatted the side of his head. "You will not address me in that usurper speech!"

"By all that is blessed, Bôr," said the Chieftain with an exhale of exasperation. "Bait her no further and speak to her as she wishes."

Mistress Gelluives rounded on him. "You hear me, son of Arathorn! In the days of Arador the fosterlings of Imladris spoke skillfully the tongues of our fathers and studied well beneath the hand of the Peredhel, and the elders of the Dúnedain were treated with respect! And dirty urchins did not come bursting into chambers unbidden—"

"I bade her, lady," said Aragorn in Sindarin, and he became in that moment both courteous and stern. "She is daughter to my kinsman Halbarad, who bears also the blood of our long-fathers. She shall aid me in attending your hurts."

"She shall not!" the lady cried. "And neither shall you, heir of kings or no! I shall be attended by none but—"

"He shall come, Grandmother," interrupted Bôr, at last yielding and addressing her in Elvish. "But you must not exert yourself, you have taken an arrow and swooned—"

For this audacity Bôr endured another round of tongue-battering, and Aragorn sighed and rose and crossed the room to where I huddled against the wall. He stooped and retrieved the candle the old woman had flung, and drew me to my feet, and brushed his thumb across the sting the missile had left on my cheek.

"She is very old," he whispered.

I felt my nose wrinkle. "She was very ill when they arrived," I whispered back. "And she has been shot with an arrow? How is it she is not dead?"

Aragorn's eyes were solemn but I could tell when they crinkled at the corners that my question amused him.

"She is a tough one to kill, I reckon," he said. He took the basin from my hand. "How fares your knee?"

"It is well," I said carefully. I did my best to stand squarely upon it.

"I will see it again when we are finished here."

At that moment the door beside us opened, and Lord Elladan ducked through it and straightened. He took in the scene with a sweep of his eyes and then turned them upon the Chieftain.

"Good, you are here," said Aragorn. "She is your concern now. She will not let me near her."

"The _lady_ is not a concern," said Elladan austerely, but I could see the corner of his mouth tugging in that way that was so familiar on his twin's face. He lofted an eyebrow at Aragorn and then turned and crossed the room to Mistress Gelluives on the table. He slipped to one knee beside it and took her hand and brushed his lips against her thorny knuckles.

"Peace, sweet lady," he murmured. He spoke the reverential form of his own tongue, and at the sound of his voice the old woman calmed and smiled, her arm held arched like the neck of a swan.

"Welcome, my lord," she answered. "I asked after thee, and thou art generous to come."

"It is my honor, dear one," he said. "But thou hast taken a grave wound and must surrender to care. Your Chieftain shall attend to thy hurts, if thou will allow him. He has a gentle touch and will bring healing, else I fear thy wounds will overcome thee."

"Please, my lord," she said. "Bide with me whilst I am tended. The sight of thy fair face brings me peace."

"Of course I will bide," said Elladan. "I shall not leave thy side until thou art sleeping again." He laid his hand on her shriveled cheek, and she relaxed beneath his touch and let him ease her shoulders down upon the table.

With Elladan beside her, she allowed Aragorn to care for her as demurely as if she had not been hurling insults mere minutes before. His hands were exquisitely gentle as he bound the wound in her shoulder with a compress of fragrant herbs. He gave me more to steep in the water that simmered over the little stove, and when I brought the steaming cup back to him he cooled it with a splash of water from a skin and handed it to Elladan. Mistress Gelluives drank it without protest when Elladan lifted to her lips. In the corner Bôr prepared a nest of blankets, and when the lady had drank, Elladan lifted her gently and settled her among them. He cushioned her with care and drew another up to cover her and at last pressed a hand to her wrinkled old forehead.

"Rest and mend," he murmured. "Thou need only call if thou hast need of me."

She did not answer. Her tissue-thin eyelids fluttered and stilled.

Elladan stood and came silently back to the table. Aragorn observed him with his lips pressed firmly together, but did not speak. He gathered his supplies into their bag and rose and beckoned me to follow him. Elladan came behind, and when we were out again in the open air Aragorn looked at the elder twin with something like mischief narrowing and brightening his eyes.

"I was not aware you had such skill with Edain wives."

"Govern your tongue, stripling," said Elladan crisply. "I have never met the lady before yesterday. She mistakes me for our father, who was friend to her husband."

Aragorn laughed shortly. "I am grateful you were here to soothe her. I fear we might have been forced to knock her on the head had you not arrived in such timely fashion."

"Her mind will clear with rest and healing," said Elladan. "Elders of your race do not succumb easily to maladies of age."

"Or arrows, it would seem. Though I fear we cannot afford her much rest, if we are to overtake the others. Those coming behind, have they a cart?"

"Several of them. And milk cows, and flocks of goats, and crates of chickens stacked like bricks. Your Dúnedain seem to have forgotten how to flee unburdened when the orcs come raiding."

"It is a loss of memory bought with the lives of Rangers and Imladrim alike."

"Any peace bought is but a temporary purchase," said Elladan, and I could hear a thread of venom twining through the music of his voice. "They pour from the Hithaeglir like some unholy fount, and I fear soon the trickle will become a torrent. Glorfindel already is stretched thin keeping them dammed."

As frightened as I was by their grim words, my curiosity overcame even that. "Why did they attack us?" I asked. "We do not have treasure for them to steal."

To my surprise it was Elladan who answered. "They have little love for treasure," he said. "Nor for any beautiful thing, lest it be to spoil it or lay it to waste. They nurse instead their hatred for your people, young one, the Men of Westernesse, and the Elves your long-kindred." He raised his eyes to Aragorn. "And ever does their master fear in his heart that the heir of his vanquisher lives still in secret among the Dúnedain."

"Her mother would not thank you for frightening the child," said Aragorn mildly.

"It is more frightening to be caught up in the midst of a battle one does not understand."

"I am not frightened," I cut in. The Chieftain looked at me closely, and I amended, "I mean, I am frightened for our people, and for my sisters and mother. And I am frightened of the wolves and that there may be orcs." Aragorn and Elladan were watching me silently, and that encouraged me to complete my thought. "But I would be more frightened if everyone was whispering and being sneaky to keep me from understanding the danger we are in."

"There is little use in being sneaky when you have set your mind on overhearing, little cousin," said the Chieftain, but his severity was feigned and did not cow me.

"We are safe in the daylight, though, aren't we?" I asked. "Aren't orcs afraid of the sun?"

The two adults exchanged a glance that was less than comforting. "They do not care for it," said Aragorn carefully. "And like better the dark. But there are some that will brave the light, if driven fiercely enough. So we are careful even in the full of day. Especially in the gloom beneath the trees."

"Which is why we set a watch, even in the daytime?"

"Even in the daytime," he agreed. "And the wargs are bolder than their allies the orcs, and do not fear the sun."

I felt my eyes fly wide. "There might be more wargs?" I remembered flat yellow eyes and the crunch of riven flesh, the heavy stench of decay, and gave a little shiver. Aragorn leaned down and caught my eye conspiratorially.

"If there are, we will send them yapping back to their lairs," he said. "For we have among our number Elrohir Wolfsbane, and his brother Elladan the Grim, and your ada has wanted a wolf pelt for his fireside for as long as I can remember."

"And you are with us," I said, feeling reassured. I thought it only fair to include him in that list of doughty warriors. "So if there are four of them, you can kill one too."

"That is generous of you," said the Chieftain wryly. He turned to Elladan, who had reclaimed his horse from where it grazed a distance away. "It seems Master Caradoc is doing his best to evade me."

"I will retrieve him," said Elladan. "I plucked the dart myself, little more than a sharpened stick, but it bears more looking after than we could afford at the time." He swung aboard and trotted briskly into the trees.

"Come, youngling," said Aragorn, leading the way to a nearby deadfall. "Let us have a look at you first."

He took a seat and stood me in front of him and freed my knee from its wrapping.

"You are a true soldier now," he said as he lay it aside. "For we must tend your wound in the open air instead of the infirmary."

"It is not much of a wound," I said. I was grasping at any opportunity to repair my earlier dishonor, if only in my own mind. "Caradoc and the old wife took arrows each."

"It is wound enough," he answered. "And tender, no doubt."

I grimaced, for he was right. "Why is it so stiff?"

"A knee is complex apparatus," he said. "It is made up of ligaments that hold the bones together, and several great tendons—" He touched one lightly to identify what I could not see. "—which anchor muscle to bone. Damage to the skin and tissue causes fluid to collect, and so the entire joint stiffens." While he spoke I felt his fingers pressing, but was intrigued enough by his explanation that I barely felt the sting. Slowly I twisted and leaned back, craning my neck to try and see behind my leg. I glimpsed a ragged line of stitches marching towards the lowermost part of my thigh before I lost my balance and toppled backwards.

The Chieftain caught me. "You truly wish to see it?" he asked when I continued to twist. I nodded, and he raised an eyebrow but let me balance against his shoulder so I could contort enough to see my sutured wound. It was red and swollen, sticky with remnants of yellow salve, and the black thread looked strange against my skin, like two-dozen mayflies alighted along a rough inverted **V**.

"It did not cut my tendons," I observed.

"For that I am exceedingly thankful."

"How many wounds have you stitched?"

He righted me. "Are you doubting my proficiency?" he asked, but I could tell he was teasing.

"No."

He produced a container of salve and twisted off the lid. "I lost count many years ago."

"Did Daernaneth Ivorwen make that?"

"Elladan and Elrohir's adar did," he said, greasing my wound with it. The sting dulled almost immediately.

"What is in it?"

He did not answer, but held the flat silver tin up to my nose.

"Beeswax?"

"Yes. What else?"

I sniffed again. "Lavender. And… what is the spicy smell?"

"_Nemsereg_," he said, enunciating clearly.

I performed a quick mental interpretation and found myself bewildered. "Bloody-nose?"

"You would have learned it _yarrow_, or milfoil, perhaps."

I had to laugh as comprehension hit me. "Naneth calls them squirrel-tails, and tells us not to trample them. Why did the Elves name it _nemsereg_?"

"Perhaps because it is powerful medicine against bleeding that will not stop. It is a useful little plant, and plentiful." He nudged my foot with his and I looked down and saw the herb right alongside my boot, its feathery leaves growing close to the ground.

I giggled. "So if my nose was bleeding I could shove it full of _nemsereg_?"

"I suppose you could," he said. He began to re-wrap my leg. "Although then you would have to dig them out, which might start you bleeding all over again. But if you had a wound that would not stem, and staunched it with yarrow you had crushed, it could very well save your life." He tied off the bandage and I rotated slowly to face him. He must have guessed that I was turning my next question over in my mind; he set aside his supplies and cleaned the salve from his fingers and then observed me patiently.

"How did you know you wished to be a healer?" I asked at length.

He seemed to consider this for a moment, studying his hands where they braced against his knees. At last he looked up at me with his head tipped a little to the side. "You know that I grew up with Elladan and Elrohir and their father, grew up in their house?"

I nodded. Of course I knew.

"Master Elrond is a physician of great renown. He began my education in the healing arts when I was very young."

Again I nodded. I knew this as well. He had not yet answered my question, though, and seemed to know it, for after another moment of consideration he went on.

"The Master of Imladris is counted among the wise of all races, and could, if he wished, detach himself from dealings with lesser men. But he does not. I have seen him attend great lords and orphaned children with equal care. It was his heart for healing, even more than his head for it, that made me wish to learn from him. It gives him joy to bring folk to restoration."

"And you as well?"

"I as well," he said. "Besides that, it is a handy trade to ply. Rangers are a reckless lot, and it seems I have spent much of my life patching them together."

This last he said louder and over my shoulder, and I twisted to see Elladan had returned, and with him Elrohir and Caradoc.

"Reckless and recalcitrant," said Elladan. "He would not let us tend him. He is your subordinate, Master Chieftain, I leave him to you to deal with."

Caradoc's eyes narrowed. He nudged his horse a step nearer to the elder twin but was stopped when Elrohir leaned down and put a hand on his bridle.

"He is right," said Elrohir. "Though I agree, his condescending tone is in dire need of amendment." Elrohir released the bridle and slapped Caradoc on the leg. "I shall serve as your champion, young Ranger, until such a time that you are fit to trounce him yourself." He swung to the ground but did not turn immediately, and as he held himself against Cabor's neck I heard him utter an oath in a tone that was almost conversational.

"Have a care you do not hurt yourself again," said Elladan, leaning a languid forearm on his saddle-front.

Elrohir tipped his head, smiled slightly, and then whirled and hauled his brother to the ground by his collar and belt.

The grey horse sidled daintily away from them as they hit beside her. Therein followed a brief melee that I watched with some bewilderment. Elladan did not—as I half-expected him to—slay Elrohir for such a breathtaking display of irreverence. Instead he heartily engaged. I recognized immediately that the odds were not evenly matched; Elrohir scarcely used his right arm, and Elladan it seemed was being mindful not to jostle him too badly as they wrestled and kicked up dust and muttered insults. Though it did not stop Elladan from pressing the advantage, and when Elrohir began to lose leverage I saw Elladan wearing his twin's radiant, familiar grin.

It astonished me. Not Elrohir's behavior—that was not startling in the slightest. But Lord Elladan, austere and stern and dignified… was _playing_.

"You should have picked a haler champion," said Elladan to Caradoc when at last he managed to slip an arm around Elrohir's throat and had begun to squeeze the air out of him.

Caradoc snorted. "I did not pick him."

Aragorn stepped over the scuffling _peredhil_ without sparing them a glance. He crossed to Caradoc and stood at his side.

"Down with you, lad," I heard him say quietly.

Caradoc slid from the saddle, staggering slightly as he landed, and followed Aragorn to the fallen log. Elladan released his twin and twisted to his feet without the use of his hands and left Elrohir panting on the grass. The latter pressed a hand to his side as he sat up but he was grinning when he looked at me.

"Good morning, Eluned."

"Good morning, Elrohir." An uneasy though occurred to me. "If you are here, who is watching for wargs?"

"Your ada," he answered. "Which means we are well-watched indeed." He stood, moving a bit gingerly, dusted himself off, and glanced towards the station.

"Where are your cohorts?" he asked. "I am surprised to see you are not with them."

My former foul mood returned in a rush. "I do not know where they are," I said darkly. I found myself half-wishing they had wandered and would earn a scolding. "They are not keeping watch with Ada?"

"No," said Elrohir, suddenly serious. "They are not." Our exchange had caught Aragorn's attention; the Chieftain ceased his work on Caradoc's leg and threw a look at Elladan.

"I sent the boy for you," he said. "Is that the last you saw him?"

"It was," said Elladan. "And the little one was headed for the stream to fill the waterskins. Perhaps he joined her."

The adults looked so concerned I felt my irritability vanish. "I will go look for them," I said.

"Not alone, you won't," said Aragorn. "Elrohir?"

"Come, Eluned, we will search for them along the stream." Elrohir crossed to the horses in two quick strides and swung himself onto Cabor. He winced a little as he reached his hand down for me to grasp, but before I could take it Elladan was alongside and legged me up.

Aragorn rose and went to Caradoc's horse. He took a horn from the saddle, a black one bound in copper the same as all the Rangers carried, and tossed it to Elrohir, who caught it one-handed and slung it over the pommel in front of him.

"I'm sure they've only lost track of the time," I said as we turned away. "I'm sure they're just at the stream. Playing in the water. Or something."

"I am sure you are right," said Elrohir, but he pressed Cabor into a canter, and his hand slipped down and loosened in its scabbard the sword at his side.

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><p><em>Thank you for reading!<em>


	14. Unveiled As I Had Never Seen Him

_A/N: I have the best betas in LotR fanfiction who also happen to be some of the best writers in LotR fanfiction._

_I am weak at the knees with gratitude to everyone who has taken the time to favorite or follow or leave me a comment. Dear Hideypidey, who makes the courteousness all worthwhile with your gorgeous reviews, thank you once again! You got me digging into the ol' source material, and I learned that Tolkien used the word "holy" only once in LotR, in reference to Elbereth. Regardless, I'm thinking that there's probably a better word for Elladan to use there and I intend to find him one that won't give a reader pause :D Thank you so much for pointing it out!_

_"Deadfall" is one that I'm being belligerently American about, just because I like it better than "log". Honestly though I had no idea it wasn't used in British English. Thank you for the tip!_

_And "sneaky" is just one of those undignified words that is fun to say and fun to imagine Aragorn saying (though without the accompanying "gollum, gollum!" I should hope!)_

_Thank you for keeping an eye out for these things for me, I really appreciate it! Let me know when you spot more :D _

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>XIV<p>

_Unveiled As I Had Never Seen Him_

I heard the water before we came upon it through the trees, and when they thinned I saw a narrow brook running swiftly between steep banks. It careened around glistening boulders and through the clear water I could see the startling green of moss growing on the bed. As we neared, Elrohir halted Cabor so suddenly my face bounced off his back between his shoulder blades.

"What is it?" I asked, rubbing my nose.

"Hush," he said curtly, and I did, straining to see or hear what had stopped him.

After a moment he eased Cabor forward. As the trail widened out in front of us, I could see something beside the nearer bank. I hooked an arm around Elrohir's waist and slid to the ground and ran to where four waterskins lay slack as empty stomachs on the dew-covered grass. Behind me Elrohir spoke my name with a note of warning, but I did not heed it. I snatched up the first skin I came to.

"They were here," I said, turning back to him. He had dismounted and was advancing on me with a perilous look in his bright eyes, but I was too anxious to pay it much mind. "Why did they leave the waterskins?"

A hard hand closed high on my arm. Elrohir gave me a sharp little shake and I looked up at him in surprise.

"I did not allow you to come along so I could have a disobedient child to mind," he snapped. "Now stay near me."

I gave him my best wide-eyed nod. His eyes lingered for a moment on mine, as if gauging their sincerity, and then he released me and turned away and began to search the ground beside the stream. I followed him, being sure to stay close to his side.

"Should we call for them?" I asked, sidling near so I could speak softly.

"No!" he said. "Quiet, now. Listen for them."

I tried. But the brook was tittering and the soft wind muttering and I could hear no other sounds. We followed the stream. Cabor came behind us, browsing through the grass, but every so often he would throw up his head and startle forward a step or two, and stare tensely off to the south before resuming his forage.

"What is he so frightened by?" I asked.

"Even brave horses care little for wind," Elrohir said distractedly, his eyes not leaving the ground. He dropped to one knee and pressed his fingers to an indent in the loam.

At that moment there came a crackle in the bushes from the left across the water, and Elrohir flew to his feet, whipping his bright sword free. He snatched my arm, levering me behind him, and then a shape erupted from the undergrowth on the far bank.

I jumped before recognition hit me. It was not our quarry that appeared, but a hart, its spangled hide torn in ribbons that hung bloody over naked white ribs. One mighty antler was broken jagged at the skull and bled in gentle gushes over a great soft eye laid wide in terror. I could see the flaring nostrils, smell the cloy of the animal's fearful musk. Its head lilted beneath the weight of its remaining antler and as we watched it reeled sideways and staggered to one shoulder, its hind feet scrabbling wildly. It rested with legs splayed and stared past us unseeing, breathing open-mouthed and bleeding onto the grass.

I started forward. I know not what I intended, only that the creature's suffering seemed to cut deeply into my chest. I might have crossed the stream and tried to approach it, but Elrohir tugged me back by my arm and whistled piercingly for Cabor.

A brief pound of hooves and then the dark horse was beside us, and I saw a ring of white around his eye that told me he was frightened. But he stood steadily as Elrohir sheathed his sword and tossed up the stirrup to free the bow that hung beneath it. He braced the bow with his foot and strung it with a little gasp of effort. From across the brook, the hart watched and panted. Its blood dribbled over the edge of the bank and flowered briefly on the surface of the water before whirling away.

Elrohir drew an arrow by its fletching and set it to the string. His fingers combed the feather-barbs in a brief caress as he raised the bow, and I knew then what he intended and almost snatched his arm in protest. But good sense restrained me at the last; I knew far better than to disturb him with that deadly weapon drawn tightly to the corner of his mouth. He took less than the space of my next inhale to aim, and then the bass note of the bowstring sang and Elrohir's arrow snuffed out what spark remained in the dying stag. It entered cleanly through the eye socket and the deer floundered and fell to its side and lay still.

I knew, of course, that the creature had been far beyond aid, knew also that its death would gift us with provision, but even so I felt a stab of sorrow. I turned to ask if we would haul it back to the station on Cabor, but Elrohir was not attending to me. He stood poised and rigid, staring into the trees, and as I watched his hand crept and nocked a second arrow.

"Get on the horse," he commanded softly.

Something in his tone sent my feet flying to obey him. I snatched a hank of Cabor's mane and scrambled for the stirrup, caught it with my toe, but my wound hindered me. Halfway up, my knee buckled. I started to fall backwards and then Elrohir boosted me with so much force I might have hurtled off the other side, had he not caught a handful of my tunic and righted me with a yank. He pulled the black horn from where it hung on its loop over the pommel and raised it to his lips and shattered the stillness with three ringing blasts.

Across the stream the undergrowth parted like a veil. From it came a great grey head, so low to the ground that for a moment I did not understand what I was seeing. The pale unblinking eyes mesmerized me. Then the shoulders emerged, the head slung low between them. The forepaws with their crusted claws pressed silently into the earth. The enormous wolf started at us and panted softly. The blood of the hart on its muzzle and teeth made the black mouth look like an old, rotting wound.

"Elrohir," I whimpered.

"I hear it," he said evenly. He faced me, away from the stream. Cabor stood as still as a carving but I could feel the muscles of his back coiling beneath me, the quivering of his rigid hide against my heels.

Slowly I saw Elrohir's fingers curl until they cradled the bowstring at the second joint. Behind him the horrendous wolf took a pair of darting steps, its loins and hind feet coming clear of the underbrush. It crouched on the far bank and the leprous hide rippled along the jutting spine and Elrohir spoke his next command in a clear voice.

"_Drego_, Cabor."

The dark horse twisted to the side like an adder, the mighty haunches launching him into a leaping gallop. I had to snatch the saddle or be left sitting in the air. I heard the twang behind me, and a yammering squeal, strangely dog-like, and looked wildly over my shoulder, frantic for a glimpse of the battle that played out behind us as we fled. But the Elven horse was so swift that we were away through the trees out of sight of the stream in a half-dozen hammering strides.

Then came a sound that carried over even the thunder of our frantic flight: a second horn-call from behind, the final note held long in summoning, and then it shrilled and wavered and cut off into silence.

I ground my teeth together and hauled back hard on the reins.

Cabor halted so abruptly that I pitched forward against his neck. He reared his forefeet off the ground, his head flinging and his teeth bared around the bit, and I knew he did not wish to heed me. He was anxious to be away from that place, anxious to obey his master's will. I knew the scent of warg lay like fire in his nostrils, knew that if he chose he could spring away unbidden and I would not have the strength to stop him again.

But I also knew how far we had come from the station, a half-mile at least, knew that even after the first horn-call the others might not come in time. And wolves did not hunt alone. Whatever danger there might be, Elrohir faced unaided.

I did not want to go back. My heart thrashed against my ribs like an unhooded hawk. I wanted to drive my heels into Cabor's sides and spring away to the safety of my father. But it was not only Elrohir in peril. Somewhere out among the dense, dark trees, my dearest friend in all the world faced unspeakable terror. Already she may have come to harm, and my last words to her had been spoken in hate.

I pulled Cabor around and coaxed him back the way we had come, petting and pleading and half-hoping he would refuse. But he did not. And when we reached the stream-side again it was empty. No body of the wolf, no Elrohir. Only the mangled stag on the far bank, the single antler propping its head off the ground. Its pink tongue hung bloodied from an open mouth.

Cabor lifted his head and tested the air. I listened with him, strained to hear some sound to guide me. I did not know what to do next. I wanted to call out. I was desperate to hear a voice, but fear kept me quiet. The silence squeezed me like a cruel hand.

But then I heard it through the trees. A shout, carried faintly on the cold wind. It took more coaxing, but at last I persuaded Cabor to follow the brook downstream towards where the call had come from. The trail was narrow; once the bank broke away beneath his hind foot and I felt his haunches fall from under me as he scrambled to heave himself free from the crumbling edge. He lunged mightily and at last regained again the solid ground, but my heart was thundering and I could not convince it to slow as we went on. I gripped the carven front of Elrohir's saddle so tightly that when at last I released it to scrape my hair from my eyes, I saw the runes and flowers etched redly into my palm.

Ahead the trees thinned. I felt the wind shift. Cabor's countenance changed abruptly. Before he had been leery of the shadows and snorting at the breeze, but now it seemed his ire had risen. I could almost feel the blood begin to simmer in his veins. He ground the bit between his teeth, his ears laced flat against his head. He rang his forehoof against the ground and sent a stallion's scream of challenge resounding through the trees.

There came an answering shout. Cabor coiled and bolted forward and I could not have halted him if I tried. He burst into the clearing.

The first thing I saw was Sive ten feet off the ground in the fork of an elm, clinging to the trunk of it. Beyond her at the edge of the trees were orcs, blacker than the gloom at their backs, a knot of clattering creatures moving in a strange and ragged synchrony as if driven by the same desire, and being held at bay by the same dread. I could hear the grating shrieks, the muttering in a foul tongue, coarse and discordant. Even from that distance it jangled in my ears. I could not see how many there were. They weaved and skittered like roaches at the verge as if afraid to step into the brightness of the clearing.

The open space between the trees was not large, and in its center waited Elrohir. He stood unveiled as I had never seen him, tall and perilous and as fair as a prince. The sword in his hand flickered dimly. His shadowy hair fell like a standard down his straight back, and I heard then the strange sound of his glorious laugh, and his call in a high tongue daring them to come to him.

At the sound of his voice the shrieks swelled into wails. I saw the foul creatures huddle close to the ground, clawing at their ears. They shuddered and pressed back, but behind them I saw figures taller than the rest, looming captains who bellowed and drove five of the cowering creatures before them into the open light.

They rallied there for a moment, shielding their eyes against the sun. They were wiry things with mottled skin, dressed raggedly in scavenged armor and moldering pelts, and the pale sun through the grey clouds seemed to torment them. But soon they recognized their foe was only one, and the cries of their fell captains drove them further, and made bold by their number, they rushed at him.

I wanted to scream. Cabor reared and struck the air, his voice ringing with challenge. I knew his great heart burned to join the battle, but in my fear I held him back. Two goblins were swifter than the others and they fell first on Elrohir, but he glided to the side and slew the foremost with a thrust beneath his arm as it hurtled past him. The next he gutted with the recovering swing, black blood arching above him in a spray, and then the others were upon him, and I thought surely they would catch and drag him down. But his sword drove forward and wrenched free again and he spun, his blade humming, and a black head rolled on the grass. He seemed to be free of the bounds of the earth and I could not wrench my eyes away, could not tear them from his swift certain movement, his sword singing with speed. His feet bore him exultantly in his ghostly death-dance and when his final foe lay writhing in its last throes at his feet he grinned a wolfish grin and stepped down on the black throat and drove his sword-point slowly and inexorably into the rolling yellow eye.

With a _crunch_ the thing shuddered and fell still.

Elrohir straightened. He turned and saw me on his horse at the edge of the trees, but I scarcely saw his face darken before an arrow whistled past his ear. He ducked and wheeled to meet a new attacker, but it seemed the dark captains could not goad their force to engage him further. Elrohir advanced on them, his sword held loosely in his hand, and three of the tallest ones stepped into the light to war with him themselves.

But I could watch no longer. I realized with a wrenching panic that a number of them had crept around the clearing near to Sive's sheltering elm, and I saw two of them dart to the base of it and begin to climb up after her.

I drove my heels into Cabor and sent him lunging forward. I did not have time to think, knew only my own panic and a single searing need to reach her before the monsters did. I had no weapon and no plan, and all my haste might have been in vain had I ridden any other horse. For it was Cabor who joined the battle joyously; he plunged in with bared teeth and eyes laid white with fury, and dragged the highest goblin from the elm tree by its neck. He flung his head savagely and I heard the crack of a spine separating even as the thing shrieked in pain and terror. The second dropped to the ground and fled scuttling back into the undergrowth. Cabor might have pursued it, but I checked him fiercely and pulled him back. I could see the others mustering for a renewed attack and knew we had little time.

Sive was above me in the fork of the elm, but I did not need to bid her. When the dark horse drew near enough she leapt and landed hard behind me, and as soon as I felt her arms wrap tight around my waist I hissed to Cabor and drove him swiftly away.

But Sive reached past me and snatched one rein and yanked him to a standstill. He plunged in protest at the wrench to his mouth and she yelled in my ear, "We cannot leave him! They will kill him if we do not help!"

I had not thought of Elrohir. The sight of him so fierce and perilous had cleared my mind of worry for him, but I looked back behind us and realized she was right. The orcs were far too many. He was caught up in a desperate battle now, the great goblins beating him down and pushing him back, but terror overcame me. I jerked the rein away from her and kicked Cabor into a gallop.

Sive was screaming, flailing at my back, and she may have vaulted to the ground and returned without me had I not reached behind and clutched tight at her jerkin. It was an awkward hold, and my seat was nearly lost when Cabor gathered and leapt across a low fallen tree. I might have pulled us both to the ground, but the dark horse ducked to the left and then was squarely beneath us again. At last Sive ceased her fighting and sagged against my back, but I could hear the sound of her frantic sobbing.

"They will come!" I shouted. I could not stand the feel of her shuddering with grief between my shoulder blades, as if Elrohir already was slain. I eased back on the reins and Cabor slowed to a trot. "Sive, the others are coming, they will rescue him. Sive, there's nothing we could do, we could not help him, they would have killed us!"

"Cabor would have helped him!" she cried. "He would not have let him die. We should go back, please, Eluned, take us back. We cannot leave him!"

I pulled a little harder, and Cabor jolted to a halt. Indecision shredded my mind. The thought of returning horrified me. I had used up my last reserves of courage and wanted nothing more than to run until we found the others and were safe behind their swords. But she was right. They would not come in time, and Elrohir would be overwhelmed and cut down before they could reinforce him.

Cabor turned. My uncertainty seemed to confuse him. He raised his head and nickered shortly, staring back the way we had come, and that is when the great grey wolf exploded from the underbrush and crashed into his side like a battering ram.

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><p><em>Thanks so much for reading!<em>


	15. Valiant Heart, Lay Down Your Arms

_A/N: So sorry for the delay in updates! And thank you to everyone who has favorite/followed/reviewed. This week was crazy and I have this niggling feeling that I may have failed to reply to everyone I needed to. If that was you, please let me know so I can thank you personally!_

_I am very grateful to Cairistiona7, Linda Hoyland, and Levade for all their hard work and encouragement. They are Betas Extraordinaire; any remaining mistakes are my own._

_I'm putting a warning on this chapter for some gory details._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>XV<p>

_Valiant Heart, Lay Down Your Arms_

The great wolf hit Cabor so hard in the shoulder I felt the impact judder into my own bones. Cabor twisted mightily away but the warg was driving, driving, savaging his haunch and belly, lunging for his chest and forelegs and snapping at his knees, until at last I felt Cabor's feet falter and saw his head duck and disappear. He plunged forward as if sucked into a sudden mire and flung me away into the undergrowth as he fell.

When I hit the ground, the air gusted out of me and my sight went black. There was no sound, only ripping pain in my throat and chest as my lungs fought to expand and fill again. In a slow, murky seep my vision and breath returned together. I gasped and wheezed and clutched my belly and thought fleetingly that I should lie still in the ringing silence until my head and chest stopped howling. But in that moment all things seemed to clear and instead of silence I heard snarling and the thrash of battle in the undergrowth and new terror clouted me like the blow of an axe.

I rolled. Cabor flailed on his side. The wolf mauled at his belly, leaping back from beating hooves only to dive in again with teeth laid bare and bloody, and Cabor's flank was riven wide and his legs were tangled and he could not seem to gain his feet. But the scream that wrenched from my throat was for another reason entirely, for Sive lay pinned beneath him as he floundered.

She clawed at her leg jammed beneath the cantle, pushed with all her strength against his back, silent and frantic, the crushing weight of him grinding her into the earth. I was too afraid to fly in and try to pull her free. The sight of the wolf with shriveled snout and ragged teeth held me brutally at bay. It dove in snarling and drove Cabor further onto his side and Sive pounded at the saddle and twisted and writhed.

I heard the sickening _crack_ of snapping bone.

For the space of a breath the world seemed to slow. I saw Sive's back arch and her mouth open but make no sound. The wolf rallied for its final butchering bite, the black jaws stretching intolerably wide, and then Cabor coiled a hind foot and kicked the warg so hard in the face it reared and fell back yammering, clawing at its snout. The dark horse rolled to his belly and heaved to his feet and left Sive floundering in the grass.

Cabor bolted. I do not fault him; beside the giant wolf he looked no bigger than a cart-pony. Already he was scored in belly and haunches, the hide of his flank hanging tattered and torn. I could smell his fear and his hot, bright blood and the warg with yet more smeared on its muzzle and ruff pursued him, snapping at his hocks as they crashed away into the trees.

I scrambled on my hands and knees to Sive's side. Her shoulders shuddered as she clutched at her thigh. Blood leached beneath her fingers. She whimpered my name, and then her eyes rolled white and her thin body slackened and her stemming hands fell limply to the grass. The stain on her hose continued to spread, so rapidly it looked like someone was pouring dark blood up from underneath. My head began to float. With a sickening lurch I realized that she was bleeding to death right in front of me.

With trembling fingers I jerked up the hem of her tunic and fumbled loose the points at her hip and stripped down the stocking. The wool snagged on something sharp and I gave it a tug to lay bare the source of the bleeding. For a heartbeat I could not breathe nor think, could only try to scream, but no sound would come. The blood decanted out of her, out of that unspeakable wound in the center of her thigh, the broken white bone jutting like a spar. The skin around it had ruptured away to expose naked red muscle in a grisly pulp.

I touched her leg, felt the heat and the wet well up between my fingers. More blood than I had ever seen. I knew my hands alone would not be able to hold it back. Wildly I looked around me, away through the trees, desperate to see someone rushing to help us, someone to take upon themselves this impossible, horrifying task. As I cast about in panic I saw it there, a feathery patchwork in the midst of loam and dead undergrowth, immaculate green in the sunlight now breaking cleanly through the trees.

_Powerful medicine against bleeding that will not stop._

I lunged over her and fell to my knees just within reach of the blessed yarrow. I yanked it out in handfuls. The stems were tough and stringy and one plant came up by the roots, spraying earth, and I tossed it away. I was not foolish enough to pack Sive's wound with mud. When I could hold no more I scrambled to my feet, crushing the leaves in my hands as I hurtled back to her side. I shredded them with my nails until green juice began to run, wadded more into my mouth and chewed it. My stomach revolted but I ground my teeth hard against the bitter taste, and then I spat into my hands and packed the whole green spongy poultice into Sive's wound.

The broken end of the bone bit into my palm. Beneath me Sive groaned and began to shudder, but I made myself ignore her and pressed my hands more firmly. She was grey as a corpse and I might have thought her one, but for the shudders that wracked her, nearly lifting her shoulders off the ground with every spasm. I pressed down even harder to try and hold her still. I wished she would scream or weep or curse at me for hurting her, anything but her white-eyed silent shaking. My fingers slickened with blood. I did not dare lift them to see if my compress was damming the life within her. My own body began to shake in rhythm with hers.

Then the thought came to me, tapping insistently on the unfocused panes of my eyes.

_Call for help._

I heeded it immediately. I filled my lungs and yelled. I did not think to fear that some enemy would hear and find us first. I shouted until my throat constricted, and I ground my hands against Sive's mangled thigh, and when at last my voice faltered and no one had come I slumped over her and felt hope seep relentlessly between my fingers.

Then, a touch on my shoulder, so sudden and come from such silence I nearly leapt away from it. But I would not leave Sive bleeding. I could not lift my hands. I clamped them tighter and huddled over her body and squeezed my eyes shut. I waited for the crunch of cruel jaws closing on my neck.

"Eluned. Lune, you must let me see." A pair of hands pulled gently at my shoulders. "Eluned, let me near her. The danger has passed now, you must move aside and let me see." The hands became insistent. They slipped around my middle and lifted me and set me to the side.

Aragorn pressed one hand over the wound and pushed two fingers of the other into the crease of Sive's groin. I realized he was seeking her pulse and experienced a sudden searing terror that he would not find it at all. Just as quickly I realized that she could not be both dead and trembling.

"Hold her," he said over his shoulder, the calm of his voice a jarring contrast to my slamming heart. "She must not move."

I cast my weight across her chest and did my best to keep her still. Aragorn shifted his hands lower and cradled her knee, pushing his fingertips deeply into the hollow behind it. He waited for a moment, his face blank with concentration, and then his shoulders heaved once in a sigh of relief. But he did not waste time rejoicing at whatever good news he seemed to have found. He tugged the sagging hose off her foot and wadded it against the wound, loosening his belt with his other hand. When it was free he worked it around her thigh, lifting her hips to slide it beneath her, and cinched it down over the stemming pad of hose. Next he ducked out of his cloak and spread it over her. He caught my hand and pressed my first two fingers against Sive's throat beneath her jaw.

"Feel it?" he said.

Her blood fluttered against my fingertips. "Yes."

"Keep them there. You must tell me if it changes. Put your other on her chest." He shifted towards her feet and pushed the cloak and jerkin aside to reveal her mangled leg again. The makeshift bandage barely covered the wound and I found I could not look. Instead I searched Sive's face, her enormous eyes threaded with tiny broken vessels, and did my best not to look as frightened as I felt.

"Speak to her," said the Chieftain. "Reassure her."

"Sive…" Her eyes flickered and roamed and finally found me. She latched her gaze desperately onto mine. "Sive, you will be alright, the wolf is gone, and Aragorn is here now. He's going to save you, Sive, you're going to be alright. You're safe now…"

I don't know how much she heard, only that she seemed to cling to the sight of me. Somewhere in the midst of this I became vaguely aware of someone else arriving, and I wrenched my eyes away from my friend's face and looked up to see Elladan had come. He eased to the ground beside Sive, pulling off his cloak, which he rolled into a bundle and slid beneath the ankle of her uninjured leg. Next he lifted her hand and chafed it briskly and raised it to his mouth to breathe upon it as if she suffered frostbite instead of a snapped thighbone. His face was so calm I nearly screamed at him. I wanted to grab his head and shove it at her gruesome injury and see some of my own fear mirrored in his eyes. Beneath my pressing fingers Sive's pulse changed.

"It's getting slower!" I cried. I looked wildly at the Chieftain, expecting him to spring up and begin some desperate measure to call her back to life. Instead he laid his own fingertips against her wrist.

"Is she dying?" I demanded, and Aragorn blew out a breath and smiled briefly.

"No," he said. "Look at her face!"

I did, and saw color blooming there again, the blue of her lips giving way to pink. Her eyes fell closed and the tension left her body and her chest beneath my hand began to rise and fall in steady rhythm instead of sobbing gasps.

"The artery?" said Elladan. He kept at his work on her hand, rubbing as if to warm it.

"Still a pulse," said Aragorn. He felt again behind her knee, as if to reassure himself. "Bleeding dark, and too much for my comfort, but Eluned managed to slow it in time." He tucked the cloak more firmly against Sive's side. "We will need a splint, and a way to carry her without jostling. Where are the others?"

"They will be along. Halbarad will not hound them far. They were not many to begin with and Elrohir already had cut a swath through them."

"He came away unscathed?"

"I did not see. I followed you as soon as they broke and scattered."

"But he was alive?" I blurted.

"He was," Elladan answered, and set Sive's hand down gently and pulled the Chieftain's cloak over it. "I will cut what we need."

Halfway up he buckled strangely and twisted to one knee. His hand rose and pressed to the back of his head and came away bloodied, and he stared at it a moment, looking irritated.

"Lucky bastard," he murmured, feeling again.

"Perhaps you should sit for a moment," said Aragorn.

"Perhaps you should save your concern for the child," replied Elladan frostily. He pushed to his feet with a hand braced on his knee.

He had not been gone on his errand for more than a minute or two when Elrohir emerged running through the trees. At the sight of us he sped up. I felt my belly constrict. Not only had I defied his commands, but I had abandoned him to face his enemies unaided. I could barely look at him as he crouched beside Sive and lifted up the Chieftain's cloak to see the wound that lay beneath it.

His face became very grave. He lowered the cloth carefully. His knuckles were shredded and sticky with blood, red and black.

"How did this happen?"

I found myself suddenly skewered by two unwavering pairs of eyes.

"The wolf," I said. My chin began to quiver. "We stopped… Sive wanted to go back to help you. It jumped out of the bushes and knocked him down, and she couldn't get free…" I could barely force the next words out; they came in the barest whisper. "I should have pulled her free. I should have been able to save her. I was too afraid…"

Like a choking hand the truth closed on me. My fault. All of it, mine and mine only. My willfulness and pride, my thoughts of my own cleverness—my blatant disobedience. But it was not I who paid the price. Elrohir's words from a lifetime ago returned to me: _You should say a prayer of thanks that your friend suffered no more than a twisted ankle while caught up in the midst of your folly._

I was drenched so suddenly with shame that I could barely breathe. I heard the thrash of booted feet running through the brush, and then my father was at my side. He caught my shoulders and hugged them tightly and for a moment I squeezed my face against his side. Distantly I heard Aragorn explaining what had happened, and Elrohir asking a question that assailed me with fresh fear.

"Where are Halvard and Caradoc?"

"Caradoc is standing watch. Halvard disappeared after the horses. A boy gets a taste of black blood and starts to think himself invincible. I may have to remind him otherwise." My father's voice held a hint of growl. "He did the right thing, though, to come for us as swiftly as he did. He was leading us to you even before we heard your first horn-call."

Elrohir looked up and whistled a short sharp note. When after a moment he received no answer, he furrowed his brow and tried another, longer with a lilt in the middle, and I recognized it from Halvard's tutelage. _Where are you?_ it said, and after a moment the answer sounded from off to the right of us.

"Why does he not come?" Elrohir muttered, but then Halvard appeared, leading Sael and Morien between the trees. He clutched the Elven dagger as if waiting for some attacker to leap at him. His face was so twisted with misery that my father released me and met him halfway.

"Are you wounded?" he asked, and Halvard shook his head violently. He was staring at the ground and did not look up, and then he darted and disappeared behind a broad tree-trunk. I could hear the sounds of retching and hacking. My father followed him. His murmurs carried to me, the gentling tone he reserved for flighty horses and distraught daughters, and apparently nauseated boys as well. When they emerged, he had his arm across Halvard's shoulders.

"You could not catch Cabor and Lithui?" asked Elrohir sharply, and Halvard gave a little whimper.

"Elrohir," my father said. "He cannot get up."

Elrohir stared at them for a moment, as if the words made no sense to him. Then his shoulders slackened. He breathed his favorite curse so gently it sounded more like a beloved name, and stood, and walked back in the direction Halvard had come from.

My father murmured something in Halvard's ear and gave his shoulders a squeeze and followed.

I glanced down at Sive, and Aragorn as he began to splint her broken leg, and Elladan, who had returned and was assisting with deft and gentle hands. I found I had no stomach to stay and watch. I wanted to feel my father's reassuring touch again, was suddenly craving it. I scrambled to my feet and hurtled after him.

I caught up where the ground dipped down into a shallow ravine. Ada looked back in surprise when I pounded up behind them, and for a moment I thought he was going to send me back. But his face softened. He raised his arm for me to sidle under and I walked the rest of the way with my face half-buried in his side.

We came into a little clearing at the mouth of the ravine. At the edge of it lay the corpse of the wolf; I could see an oily stab-wound in its side, and its pulpy lower jaw, as if it had taken a mighty kick. The grass there was lush and a spray of yellow violets bloomed in the shade. In the midst of them stood Elladan's grey mare, her head slung low, and in front of her Cabor lay on his belly with his head raised, as horses will do when they laze in the sun. But as we neared I saw his great chest laboring far too hard, his nostrils flaring violently, his face netted with tiny beads of sweat. Both forelegs were thrown out before him as if he had tried to rise and failed. His back and flanks were shredded, and the tendon-grooves of his haunches and hocks, but that was not the worst of it.

He had taken a crushing bite to the windpipe and was suffocating slowly.

Elrohir drew up short. "Ai, little brother," he said softly, and at the sound of his master's voice in that familiar tongue, Cabor tried again to rise. He thrashed and fell heavily and Elrohir flew to him and cast his body down across Cabor's neck, held that lovely head with all his weight against the bloody ground.

"Do not struggle, brave boy, the fighting is over now." Cabor's side was heaving but I could see the sharp lines of his neck and throat grow soft. Elrohir laid his hand on the horse's jaw, stroked down those fine nasal bones to the sweat-streaked muzzle, and held it briefly in his palm. "Valiant heart, lay down your arms. You have battled well and won for me, but rest now. You will not hurt much longer, good boy, brave Cabor..."

Elrohir fingered the knife from his boot-top. He stared at it for a moment, that bright thing held in his slack hand. Cabor's head sank into the violets. He breathed a breath so deep it lifted Elrohir where he leaned across the dark shoulder. The black depth of Cabor's great gentle eye was lanced through with a pinprick of white light and I realized then that he knew and waited and felt no fear.

But still Elrohir stared and did not move. My father released me and crossed to the fallen horse in a few quick strides. He gripped Elrohir's shoulder and murmured words I could not hear.

Elrohir's chest heaved once. Quick as a minnow he darted his hand out and found the amulet, the blue talisman on its braid of black mane behind Cabor's ear, and with a flick of his wrist cut it free.

He rose and departed that place without looking back. My father drew his own knife and crouched and pressed his palm against Cabor's dark lustrous throat, and his quick, unwavering hand released the brave horse to race against the joyous wind and roll among the stars.

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><p><em>For anyone who might be interested, yarrow (also known as wound wort or soldier's wort for this very reason) contains effective blood-clotting compounds and was used on battlefields for millennia as a first-response wound treatment by many peoples, from Spartans to Sioux. It's also antiseptic and astringent and is used in modern herbalism for wounds and fevers. I've had good luck with it on wire-cut horses if the wound begins to granulate or become "proud". Not to mention, the stuff will grow anywhere, has pretty flowers, and smells nice.<em>

_Thanks so much for reading!_


	16. Be Well and Be Watched Over

_A/N: Yikes, I've been unreliable lately. My apologies to everyone who was accustomed to updates every other day, and I appreciate those who are sticking around regardless!_

_Many, many thanks to Cairistiona7, Linda Hoyland and Levade for going over this thing with fine-toothed combs and eagle eyes. They are all three lovely writers and deserve hundreds of glowing reviews._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>XVI<p>

_Be Well, and Be Watched Over_

The grey mare bore two saddles now, Elrohir's atop Elladan's. My father led her by the reins and carried Elrohir's bridle hung on his other shoulder. I did my best not to look at the red smears the bit left on his jerkin beneath his arm, nor the spattering of blood on the cuff of his sleeve.

He did not speak as we walked. Twice he raised his hand and kneaded the space above his shoulder blade. An old wound, I knew, one that troubled him when the grey clouds rolled in. Already I had eyed him carefully for signs of fresh hurt, and found none, unless I counted his dark and troubled eyes, or the way his chest seemed as if it was no longer up to the task of holding his shoulders squarely. He looked as if he had battled long for the losing side.

Questions rattled inside my skull. _Will she see out the night? Will she heal?_ _Will she ever forgive me? Will Elrohir? _But my father was so intent in his silence I found I could not muster the courage to ask.

When we reached the others, the Chieftain and Elladan had nearly finished lashing Sive's sound leg to her broken one, braced between and beside with straight green saplings and padded thickly with a heavy wool cloak. Halvard hovered nearby, holding the horses and looking sick and anxious. Elrohir had not returned.

Aragorn glanced up at us as we neared, but his eyes flicked to the grey mare and her dual burden, and the bloody bridle hanging at my father's side, and he said nothing. He knotted the last of the binding ties and then reached up to the cloaks rumpled about Sive's waist and pulled them down to blanket her completely.

"Come, Halvard, we will cut branches to bear her," said my father, tethering the horses. The two of them roamed a distance into the trees and soon I heard the brittle sounds of bark and wood being hacked away. And still I stood looking down at her, Sive cocooned in cloaks, her lips dark in her thin face. I knew not whether to cry or speak to her or do as Halvard had done and trip behind a tree to vomit.

"Will you sit with her, Eluned?" asked Aragorn. I nodded vaguely and crossed to her and sank down near her head. My hands seemed unwilling to reach out and touch her; I was afraid that she would feel as cold and clammy as she looked. My eyes wandered for something to see besides her grey face, and the way her hair clung sweaty to her forehead and against her neck.

Elladan knelt, sitting on his heels. His own face looked whiter than I thought usual, and his eyes were turned down. I saw a little tremor run the length of his throat, as if he swallowed back some threatening sickness, and then Aragorn reached and grasped his jaw to turn his face.

Elladan ducked away impatiently. "Leave it alone. It barely clipped me."

"A clip from an orcish cudgel is enough to rattle even your thick skull," said Aragorn, trying again to turn Elladan's head.

"Leave it, I said," Elladan growled, and began to rise.

Aragorn pushed him back down by the nape of his neck. "Sit for a moment. Listen to the songbirds."

"I have heard enough songbirds." Elladan shrugged off his hand. "We have much to do, and there are leagues yet to ride if I am to catch Dírhael before dark."

"You will not ride to catch him, not when you are too addled to see straight. _Sit down_." Aragorn said the last crisply, turning the full force of his eyes upon the elder twin, and something in his tone made me sit a little straighter.

To my astonishment, Elladan obeyed. He looked somewhat bemused and scrubbed a strand of dark hair behind his ear with a quick hand. Aragorn watched him for a breath or two with narrowed eyes, as if expecting him to rise again, and only then did he tip Elladan's head forward and part the hair at the back with gentle fingers. Elladan allowed this, though his brows collided when Aragorn pressed more firmly, and he jerked his head a little as if it crossed his mind to pull away. But he did not, and Aragorn finished his examination and stood.

"Stay with her, Elladan, please?" he said, and the sternness was gone from his voice. It was a request, spoken wearily, and Elladan at last dipped his head in acknowledgement. Aragorn turned and jogged into the trees after my father and Halvard.

Left alone with Elladan, I found myself staring awkwardly at my hands folded in my lap. For the first time I realized my palms were black with dirt and blood, the skin ragged where I had flung from Cabor and skidded on the ground. The side of my face throbbed, and the ache behind my knee flared suddenly as if offended I had forgotten it so easily. Sive lay without moving, but for the faint rise and fall of her chest, and I felt my stomach shrivel at the thought of the pain she must be feeling, and the pain she would endure. I tried to paint away the image of her gaping, ruptured wound from the forefront of my mind, but found I couldn't. It leapt at me, the memory of jagged bone pricking my palm, the sear of her blood as it wetted my fingers. My hands began to shake, and even when I pinned them under my thighs I could still feel their trembling. It shuddered up my arms.

"Child?" Elladan's voice nudged through my haze, though it seemed somehow foreign, so tempered with gentleness. Fingers slipped around my elbow and squeezed it lightly, and that simple touch was enough to overthrow me. I flung myself blindly into it, felt a pair of hands clutch me unsteadily, and the body against my face draw up and tighten as if its owner was surprised. For a raw, hideous moment I feared Lord Elladan would set me firmly away from him. But then his chest softened with a sigh, and the hand that had held me slightly at bay slid up to palm my head against his collarbones.

"_Sîdh_," he murmured, and my spirit obeyed. In the sudden stillness that followed I began to feel horrified at my predicament: I had just hurled my grubby, bloody, weeping self into the lap of a great lord, was rubbing mud and tears into his fine clothing and likely sullying his careful dignity, but I was too mortified to pull my face out of the front of his jerkin and run the risk of meeting his eye. I burrowed deeper. His hand on my hair gave a little caress.

"It has been a few years since I have consoled a distraught, mud-covered child," he said, and his voice could have been Elrohir's for the wry good-humor in it. I found it gave me the courage to push away from him. I scooted nearer to Sive's head, putting a comfortable measure of space between myself and Elladan again.

"Forgive me, my lord," I mumbled, hauling my sleeve across my dripping nose. He did not answer. Had he been the Chieftain, he might have told me there was nothing to forgive; had he been his twin, I might have been gently teased for soaking his shirtfront. Had he been my father, I would have been soaking it still.

Instead he fiddled with the cloak over Sive's legs, and slipped his hand beneath it to feel again her pulse.

"It was quick thinking, young one," he said at length, not looking at me, "to use the _nemsereg_ as you did. She may have bled out had you not acted so swiftly."

I had an answer to this. It weighted the back of my tongue. _It does not matter, though, does it, if she dies from infection, or loses her leg_. But I would not speak to Elladan so brazenly, even if what I spoke was true. Silence stretched. The sounds of the others at their woodcutting carried on the breeze. Nearby on the grass Elrohir's saddle lay with its sheepskin underside turned up, the saddle blankets slumped despondently beside it. They were sullied with dark marks, the back of the blue one shredded and snagged. I looked away.

My father and Halvard and the Chieftain returned, and fashioned a stretcher from saplings and cloaks. Then there came a grim moment when Ada and Aragorn lifted Sive onto it, quick and coordinated, but it stirred her enough that she moaned and tried to roll onto her side. They had to bind her with their hands until she was still again. My father crouched beside her, restraining her lightly with a hand on her chest, and the Chieftain went to the grey mare and untied her and led her to where Elladan still knelt in the grass.

"We can come back for you, if need be," said Aragorn quietly.

Elladan lanced him with a dark look. He pushed to his feet, moving slowly, and put his hand on his saddle-bow. He braced himself there for a moment, and his cheek hollowed as if he had sucked the inside of it between his teeth and bitten down. Then he caught his stirrup and put his foot into it and stepped aboard. The wound in his head had bled down the back of his neck and made his dark hair cling to his collar.

We began the slow march back. Halvard led the horses, Elrohir's saddle riding atop my father's now. Ada and the Chieftain lifted the stretcher and followed him. I stood for a moment, waiting for Elladan to go next, but then I realized he was looking at me with a bit of impatience, and that he intended to bring up the rear himself. I hobbled after the sad little column, and heard the start of light footfalls as the grey mare came behind.

Somewhere along the way, Elrohir ghosted out of the trees and fell into step alongside the stretcher. He brushed Sive's face with his knuckles, and her hand rose and latched onto his so tightly I could see the white around her clinging fingers. She held onto him all the way back to the waystation and through the little door, though he had to squeeze back alongside the Chieftain to fit without making her turn loose. A few long minutes, and my father reemerged, two waterskins slung over his shoulder. One he handed up to Elladan, who had not dismounted.

"Your brothers insist," said Ada. "And ask you drink it all without protesting."

Elladan looked irritated, but he accepted the vessel. "Are those the words they chose?"

Ada smiled fleetingly. "No, my lord." He turned to me. From the corner of my eye I saw Elladan sidling his horse away to give us space. My father looked grave and a little guarded.

I spoke before he could. "You're leaving again, aren't you."

"I am," he said simply. "Caradoc and I must help guard the others as they come." His eyes shadowed briefly as he looked at me—worry perhaps, or sorrow. But it was soon replaced by something brighter and more biting. He gripped my shoulder. "Eluned…"

There was a note in his voice as he spoke my name, one I had never heard before, but I recognized it immediately. It was distrust, and like a knife it entered my chest between my ribs and twisted. I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Look at me," he said, his voice so unyielding I could do nothing but obey. When he spoke again the words were stern as granite.

"Do not follow me."

"Yes, sir." The first tear ran salty into the corner of my mouth.

"I will not be crossed in this, Eluned."

"Yes, sir."

"Sive will need you in the days to come. She has a hard road ahead of her, a painful one. She will need her friend nearby."

"Yes, Ada."

"You stay with the Chieftain, and you do as he says and help wherever you can."

I squeezed my eyes shut again and swallowed down a shuddering sob. I wanted to demand he not leave me again—or burst out with all my fears and worries, my visions of him broken and bleeding, or lost and alone. But even more than those things, I wanted to beg him to forgive me. I wanted to hear the words of absolution in that beloved rumble of a voice, before he rode away and left me standing hollow and ashamed.

Instead I sniffed hard and pried my eyes open again and whispered, "Please be safe."

The air left his chest in a quick rush and he tugged me tight against him. "Ai, dear, defiant child." He slipped a hand between us and tilted my chin up to look me in the face. "All will be well again."

I gritted my teeth and took my own will by the throat and made myself believe him. And when he swung onto his black mare and adjusted his sword for an unhindered draw and slung his hood forward against the nipping wind, I did not ask him one last time to change his mind. Instead I stepped forward and laid my hand on the bridge of his boot and spoke the blessing, the Sindarin words familiar to hear but foreign to speak, for it was ordinarily the lot of my mother to see him away with the benediction about him like a coat of mail.

_Until we are met again, be well, and be watched over._

-o0o-

Slowly I crossed to the waystation door. I stopped in front of it, reaching for the handle, but some apprehension stayed my hand. _Clean and set it,_ the Chieftain had said. I remembered fleetingly the time Iolanthe had broken her collarbone, and how our great-grandmother Ivorwen had pressed so gently and pulled her shoulder, and the crookedness in the center had receded.

Somehow I knew that the jutting thigh-bone would not be so easily straightened.

A long hand reached past me and pulled open the door. I had to step back to let it, and then Elladan bumped me lightly in the back. I obeyed the prompting numbly, walked ahead of him through the tunnel, and ducked through the second door.

They had lain Sive stretcher and all upon the table. Old mother Gelluives lay still in her nest of blankets, and Bôr her grandson hovered near the fireplace, craning his neck. The Chieftain directed him to the box of candles in their nook dug into the dirt wall, and bid him burn as many as he found. "Light this place as brightly as you can," he said, and soon the little room was washed in a warm glow.

Aragorn crossed to the chest in the corner and from it withdrew a pair of wooden bowls, and a long ream of heavy cloth, and an earthenware jug corked and sealed with wax, so large that he listed a little as he carried it to the table.

Elrohir lifted an eyebrow. "Ale?"

"Brandy," answered Aragorn. He thumbed loose the closures of his bloody cuffs and rolled his sleeves above his elbows. He dug in his leather bag and produced a lump of coarse soap, wetted his hands with a splash from a waterskin, and began to scrub. When he had lathered for several minutes, Elrohir poured fresh water and Aragorn rinsed his hands beneath the stream. Next Elrohir washed, and I stepped up and poured the rinsing-water without being asked. He neither met my eye nor spoke to me. I lifted the basin that had caught the grimy, sudsy water and carried it outside to empty.

When I returned, water simmered on the stove, and the room was warming. Aragorn had drawn up a stump and sat near Sive's head. Her eyes were scarcely cracked open but they flickered when he settled his hand on her chest and spoke in a gentle voice.

"Sileveth, _melui_, we are back at the hobbit-hole, safe from the wolves. We must clean your wound now, and straighten your leg and bind it, and you must be very still lest you begin to bleed again. Elrohir and I will help you sleep, but you must soften your mind, just as you would if you were trying to fall asleep on your own."

As he spoke Elrohir came to her other side and lifted her slack hand. Aragorn pressed her brow and continued to murmur, his voice melding into Elvish, and within seconds her head lolled and her breathing deepened. I felt my own lids weight with sudden sleepiness and wished I could slide down the wall and rest. _Only for a moment…_

"I dare not push her further," said Aragorn. My eyes cleared and I saw that Elladan had joined them at the table and drawn up the second stump. He steadied Sive's head between his hands. Aragorn scraped his own seat along the floor to sit by her hip and drew back the cloak that covered her legs. The gaping break was mostly hidden by the splint they had devised, but as Elrohir and Aragorn began to loosen the binding ties, it came slowly into view. At last Aragorn peeled back the last layer of bloody cloth and Sive's wound lay uncovered, obscenely red against her sallow skin.

Bôr hovered over Elrohir's shoulder, straining for a glimpse, and when he got it his face sagged, his tongue bulging. He turned away and began to retch. The Chieftain's eyes flicked to him.

"If you cannot stand the sight, master farmer, then please depart. You will be of better use fetching wood and water than gagging in the corner."

The thin man needed no further persuading. He staggered out the door with his hand covering his mouth.

For a moment I considered following him. My stomach was rolling uneasily, and the blood-covered bone in its bed of ruptured muscle seemed to leer at me. But I swallowed back the tide of acid in my throat and sniffed once and crossed the room to the wash-basin on the floor. I wetted my hands and picked up the chunk of soap and began to scrub.

Sive's blood had caked and dried in the creases of my wrists and hands and I scoured so hard my skin began to sting. I felt the prickle of eyes on my back and I did not dare glance back at the watchers. There was a long pause, and then Elrohir was beside me.

I glanced up at him, tentatively, not meeting his eye, for I knew not what I would find there. I waited for him to tell me to follow the farmer outside and make myself useful.

Instead he took my wrist and cuffed my sleeve briskly up my forearm, and the same with the other. He motioned for me to pick up the piece of soap again.

"All the way to your elbows, and beneath your fingernails…"

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><p><em>Sîdh<em>—peace

_Melui_—sweet

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><p><em>Thank you so much for reading, and for all of the favoritesfollows/reviews! You guys are awesome!_


	17. Diseased With Curiosity

_A/N: I am very grateful to Cairistiona, Linda Hoyland and Levade for their tireless help with this story._

_Many, many thanks to all who reviewed/favorited/followed. And to Eliason, who left such a generous guest review, thank you so much! I really appreciate that you took the time to give such great feedback._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p>XVII<p>

_Diseased With Curiosity_

I staggered a little as I came out of the door. It was afternoon. The day had passed in ragged spans of time: the time it took to boil a pan of water; the time it took to wash gore from a cloth; the time it took for skin to go from pink to grey again, as bone crunched back into place and blood began to run a second time. The time it took for the Chieftain's face to begin to relax. For his hand to finally lighten its pressure on the source of the bleeding. For a thready pulse to strengthen and slow.

The ache behind my knee had gradually worsened as I had lifted and carried and fetched, and by the time I hobbled out into fresh unsullied air, it had swelled into a fiery sting. Too weary to find a more comfortable seat, I sank down against the first tree I came to and buried my face between my drawn-up knees.

I did not hear or see the Chieftain until he lowered himself down beside me. I rolled my head enough to glimpse him out of one eye, and then hid my face again in my crossed arms.

"How are you feeling?" he asked after a long moment of sitting in silence.

"Sick," I mumbled into my sleeve.

I heard him sigh. "Me too," he said softly, and I was so surprised by the admission that I lifted my head and looked at him fully. He had scrubbed the bright and caking blood from his hands and face and forearms and changed into a clean shirt. He had not yet bothered to tuck it into his breeches or tie up the lacing at the throat.

I should have been teeming with questions. I had been as I had watched them work, questions whose answers I dreadfully feared, and so I had not asked. But sitting there with Aragorn beside me and the sun beginning to redden as it slanted through the western trees, I found my mind blank and cold. I could concentrate only on my stomach, and the way it felt like I had swallowed a dozen live eels that were trying to force their way back up my gullet. I beat them back down with a little whimper.

"She will sleep for a while on her own," he said, staring into the trees. "And when she wakes she must eat and drink to replenish the blood that she lost."

So much blood. So much that it slickened the dirt floor into mud. I hid my face again. The eels wormed higher.

"You should as well, little Lune. It has been no easy day for you, either."

The thought of eating nearly lost me the battle over my stomach. "I'm not hungry," I said.

"No, I would imagine not."

"And I did not get my leg broken. Or get bashed by an orc cudgel. Or get mangled by a wolf and have my throat cut." My voice cracked on the last.

"To hear Elrohir tell it, you saved your friend from the orcs. And you saved her again when she was bleeding out so swiftly."

I felt a flare of fury deep in my chest. Couldn't he understand without me having to say it aloud? I was not deserving of praise. I was not Sive's savior—I was the one who had led her merrily into trouble and hurt. Grave, mortal hurt.

"She would not have needed saving, if…"

I knew he was watching me, waiting with his customary patience for me to continue. I found the words grinding like stones in my throat. But I had begun, and I knew he would wait as long as he needed. A tear blazed a trail down my cheek.

"If I had listened," I said softly to my knees. "She would not be hurt if I had obeyed my father and stayed at home like he said."

"Perhaps not."

"She may die still, or be crippled forever."

"It is possible."

"And Cabor was killed because I did not do as Elrohir said. And…"

"And?" he prompted gently.

I squeezed my eyes shut again. "And my father will never trust me again," I whispered.

"Ah," he said, and his tone had changed. "Now that _is_ something you can influence."

At last I looked up at him, confused. He had sounded almost cheerful. "Sir?"

"What has happened has happened, Eluned. You cannot change it. You can only become wiser from it."

"I do not feel any wiser."

"Did your father bid you stay here when he rode away this morning?"

"Yes."

"And are you hurtling through the woods after him, regardless?"

Comprehension was spreading like a slow warmth. "No…"

"Good," said the Chieftain briskly. "Perhaps you are not too obstinate to learn from your mistakes, after all." He gave my backbone a pat and unfolded and stood.

"Who said I was too obstinate?" I demanded of his back as he started towards the door. I scrambled stiffly to my feet and half-hopped after him, my feet numb and tingling from sitting for so long. I drew alongside and glared up at him. "Did Ada say that?"

His mouth was tugging. "I don't recall who said it."

"I am not obstinate!"

"Of course you aren't." A leather bag lay on the ground beside the door and he picked it up and pulled a roll of oiled cloth from it. In the cloth was dried meat, and he broke off a flake of it and handed it to me.

"I'm still not hungry," I said, taking it.

"Try it, nonetheless."

I did. It was tough and peppered, and my mouth began to water. My stomach fisted with unexpected craving and I would have wolfed down the meat in three bites had it been tenderer. The Chieftain watched with a faint, wry smile. He was chewing his own more patiently.

I gouged with a fingernail at a sliver lodged between my molars. "How will Sive eat this? It's so stringy. It will wear her out."

"Elrohir has already gone after fresher meat," he said. "We all will need it, for Sive cannot be moved for some days."

At the sound of Elrohir's name, my scarcely-filled stomach contracted sharply. "He has no horse," I said softly. "Did he go on foot?"

Something close to sympathy shadowed Aragorn's eyes. "He took Elladan's mare."

The dried meat was suddenly sandy in my mouth. "He… what if there are more orcs?"

"He will not go far, and will return before dark." Aragorn began to stuff his long shirt into the waist of his breeches. He gave the front a tug to loosen it and picked up his sword where it leaned against the doorframe. "As will I."

"You're leaving too?" I asked, my voice a little shrill. "Where are you going? What about—"

He silenced me with the tap of a fingertip on my lips. "Part of becoming wise, youngster, is learning when to ask questions, and when to keep your mouth closed and worry about your own duty."

He dealt me a pointed look, and I recognized the opening he was extending. When he lifted his hand I said, "Yes, sir. And what shall be my duty while you are gone?"

He smiled, shrugging on his coat. "Keep the fire hot, and if the old mistress awakens, bring her what she requires. And do not let that concussed half-Elven malcontent bully you into letting him leave."

"I do not believe I could stop him if he tried," I said honestly.

The Chieftain smiled again. "You're a good girl," he said. "Becoming wise can require hard lessons, but I do not think you will let the lesson go to waste." He shouldered the leather bag. "Stay inside. I'll be back before the sun goes down."

He laid his hand briefly on my head and then turned and ghosted into the trees without a sound. I tried to track him with my eyes but found in the space of three breaths that he had vanished completely, like a shaft of sunlight abruptly blotted by a cloud.

-o0o-

When I came back into the room, Sive was sleeping, Elladan sat propped against the wall near her with heavy eyelids, and Mistress Gelluives was sitting up in her nest of blankets looking about the room with bright and wary eyes. They fell on me and I nearly ducked, remembering the candle she had hurled at her first glimpse of me. But I restrained myself and instead offered her the best curtsy I could muster without a skirt to gather and spread.

"Good evening," I said.

"Where am I?" she said flatly, her voice less shrill than I had first heard it, but still loud enough to ring off the walls. Elladan lifted his head.

"You were injured, mistress," I said. "Your grandson brought you here, and the Chieftain tended your wound." She showed no signs of comprehension and I went on carefully. "You were shot with an arrow…"

"_Ped edhellen_," commanded Elladan softly.

The old mistress seemed to see him for the first time. Her eyes were clear and piercing and lingered on his face as if trying to recall the carven planes of it. Elladan returned the gaze, patient and polite and unspeaking.

"You are a son of Elrond," she said at last in Elvish.

"Yes, my lady. I am Elladan, the eldest of his children."

"My husband spoke of you and your brother."

Elladan inclined his head, elegant in that motion even sitting against an earthen wall. "My father remembers fondly the time they spent together in Imladris. We were grieved to hear he had departed."

"Taken by old age," she said tartly. "His mind crippled and his body wasted. Had it been left to me I would have had the Rangers bear him home years ago, slain in battle to be buried a champion."

"Alas," said Elladan, and I saw that he had straightened minutely where he sat. "Such lots are not left to us."

"Alas," she repeated. Her gaze snapped to me. "I need water, child," she said. Her hair was matted on one side where she had lain on it. "I am thirsty. Make haste!"

I was too startled to be affronted by her tone. I crossed to the waterskins by the table and picked one up and brought it to her. She drank deeply, her eyes never leaving me. The skin around them was dusky with age.

"Who are you?" she said when she had slaked her thirst.

"I am Eluned, madam," I said softly. "I am daughter to Halbarad, Captain of the Rangers…"

"I know who he is," she snapped. "When he was a young upstart he courted my granddaughter. So stricken with love he could scarcely speak to her."

I did not know what to say to this without sounding irreparably rude. Instead I took the waterskin back from her and busied myself twisting the stopper back into it.

"Has he a son?" she asked.

"No, my lady," I said. "Five girls."

She snorted. "So that thin-blooded woman has not the womb to bear warriors? What a shame. His grandfather should never have allowed such a diluting union."

I raised my chin, feeling my temper ignite. "My mother is not thin-blooded," I said firmly. After a moment I added, "Madam."

"Is she not?"

"She is not."

The bright eyes burned into me for a moment, and then strangely, the acidic old woman grinned. She was missing several teeth and the gaps were black and leering.

"Well you certainly have the right look about you, Halbarad's daughter," she said. Her hand darted out and caught my chin. I wanted desperately to wrench away but my pride took hold and did not allow me to. I would not seem so childish to such a horrible old crone.

"Your father's nose. And those good high cheekbones that drove my granddaughter wild." Her eyes were craftily lit. She released her hold and seemed abruptly to forget about me. "Where is this Chieftain?" she asked in Elladan's direction. "And that worthless farmer of a granddaughter's husband?"

"Lord Aragorn will be back before dusk," said Elladan. "And my brother with him. Your grandson is outside keeping watch."

"I would feel safer with lord Half-Elven watching," she said. "I would not be in such a strait now if that fool Bôr had quicker eyes. Why do you bide within when there are orcs on the prowl, and women and children to guard? And why does the girl sleep as if she cannot hear us? Is she ill?"

Sive lay covered with blankets and her heavily splinted leg was hidden. I saw that Elladan kept his hand upon her wrist, and began to suspect that her sleep was aided by the pervading peace he wielded. I wondered vaguely if the strength he gave her was draining his own, and if the duty the Chieftain had charged me with included keeping Elladan from killing himself with exhaustion.

"She is gravely injured," Elladan answered. "I hope she cannot hear us, for it is only her slumber that keeps her from crippling pain."

"A field hospital, then," said Mistress Gelluives. "You keep a humbler house of healing than your lord father, Elrondion."

"It will do in dire need, my lady," he said. "Soon your family and neighbors will join us here, and can continue on together to your people's hidden fastness. The Chieftain has decreed that all take refuge there until the orcs are driven back."

"Decreed, has he?" she said. "He may find himself with more Chieftaining than he can withstand, once all and sundry are thrown together in one lot. Some of the outliers are angered by these orc raids. There has been much muttering…"

"What sort of muttering?" Elladan asked.

The old woman fluttered a hand. "So it was in the old days, when Arador was Chieftain, and the hill trolls came down from the fells and drove us nearly to the Dike. As it was then, men trying to convince themselves that they could shoulder up command better than the one who bore it rightly. Stupid men, but even a stupid man does not take kindly to being routed from his home."

"It is by no fault of your Chieftain that they have been driven out," said Elladan, and his eyes had begun to glitter in the dimly lit room. Had he looked at me that way, I would have held my tongue and found an inconspicuous place to sit and be quiet in. I thought perhaps the old woman was addled by pain, or by the draught Aragorn had given her, for she seemed not to notice the warning light in Elladan's gaze.

"That I know well," she said. "As do all whose sense is not shredded by fear. But frightened men will lay blame where there is none, if they think it will ease their own suffering." She paused, and a spasm took her, rattling through her meager frame. She slumped a little lower in the blankets, clutching her bound shoulder with a gnarled hand.

"You are no fool, lady, for all your punishing tongue," said Elladan softly.

"No fool, no fool is the wife of Rhûd the Ranger!" she muttered gleefully, and the brightness was gone from her eyes. Her face seemed crooked again, as it had when I had first seen her. I recoiled, pressing away towards the center of the room as she continued to gabble and clutch at her blankets. I glanced at Elladan in alarm, and found him looking upon her as if touched by some fleeting sorrow. He pushed himself up slowly and crossed to the old woman and crouched at her side. He pressed his hand to her face, and when her head lolled in sleep he eased her back down amongst the blankets.

When he raised his head, his face was so grey with weariness I darted to the table and brought him a fresh waterskin. I pulled free the stopper and pressed the vessel into his hands.

He did not drink immediately. He gazed down at Mistress Gelluives. She looked no gentler in sleep, and her clawed grip on the grey blanket had not loosened.

"She is not kind," I said.

Elladan did not take his eyes from her. "Spitefulness has served her better."

I did not understand this, and so I asked instead, "What did she mean, that the Chieftain will have more than he can withstand? Why would she say such a thing? It is disloyal."

Elladan's face changed again. It was suddenly leaden with weariness, and he pushed his thumb into the hollow beneath his eyebrow as if to knead away an ache there. "You are diseased with curiosity," he said at last, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

"Asking questions is the only way I can learn anything," I said indignantly. "Or by listening from the loft, but I get into trouble for that."

He answered this with a wordless little rumble, and then pushed himself up off the floor. He swayed slightly as he gained his feet, and I took a step nearer, afraid he would crumple if I did not aid him. But he became very still for a moment, as if concentrating deeply, and then his eyes cleared and he took the handful of steps to the table and sat on one of the stumps. The knives and hooks and forceps they had used upon Sive's wound lay drying on a cloth, and beside them sat the Chieftain's canvas instrument case. Elladan flipped it open and slid a tiny whetstone from a small containing slot. He took up one of the short-bladed knives and began to sharpen it.

There was something in his movement that was lulling to see: the repetitive motion of steel against grey stone, the soft scraping chime each time the blade reversed. I watched his hands, tanned and lean and limber. But for a single scabbed abrasion on the first knuckle of his forefinger, they were unblemished. It seemed strange to me—my father's hands were spangled with scars. A pockmark the size of my thumb was gouged out of the back of his right one. I had pressed it once, and asked him what had happened, and he had smiled slightly and squeezed my shoulders and claimed he did not remember.

Elladan's hands were smooth as doeskin. Even so, I knew beyond a doubt they been bloodied and battered more times than I could count.

While I watched, he raised the left one and pressed the thumb again into the corner of his eye. His head tilted enough for me to see that the gleaming hair at the back of his skull was matted with blood.

I nearly asked him if his injury pained him, but held my tongue. Of course it did; that much was clear, and I realized that such an obvious question would annoy him. I tried to think of one that would not, for the silence in the little room was whittling away at my nerves. He ignored me pointedly, and moved on to sharpening the next knife, and not knowing what else to busy myself with, I sat across from him and watched with my hands folded in my lap.

"Why did the Chieftain cut away so much skin?" I asked at last. It was one of the questions I had feared to venture when I had seen the act performed.

"A clean wound heals more quickly," said Elladan absently, not looking up. "And lessens the chance of infection than if it is left ragged and torn."

"Why did he not stitch it closed?"

"He will when he is certain the bone is lodged correctly."

"How will he know that?"

At last Elladan glanced up at me. There was a crease of annoyance between his brows. "He will know by the feel of it, and the look when the swelling recedes, and by the sensations in her foot and lower leg." He resumed his whetting.

"Will she walk again?"

Elladan stopped again and regarded me levelly.

"Why do you ask these things?" he said.

The eels in my belly had begun to writhe again, and when I answered, my voice shook. "The Chieftain might not tell me. Or he might tell me only a little, and say to not lose hope. My adar is not here to ask, and he is not a healer. And Elrohir…" I had to stop and swallow. "Please," I went on, scarcely louder than a whisper. "I must know the truth. Is my friend going to die?"

Lord Elladan observed me, his eyes fathomless. I could not read them, nor the look on his face, and the silence stretched for so long I began to think I would receive no answer.

But then he took a measured breath and tapped the handle of the lancet he held against the tabletop, so lightly it made no sound. "If the wound begins to fester, Aragorn will take the leg," he said quietly. "If the poison of infection enters her blood, or invades the bone, then yes, she will die."

I had to grind my teeth together or be sick. I looked at Sive. She had not moved since I had come into the room. Her dark hair fanned around her face, a face I was accustomed to seeing furrowed with stubbornness or wide with delight. Not still and ashen and vacant. Her lashes lay like crescent bruises on her cheeks and for a moment I felt the spark of hope within me fade into an ember and all but go out.

But I clenched my teeth and made myself remember. I remembered days of chasing through the woods, of battles with trolls and dragons and all manner of feel beasts, no less frightening for being made of shadow and imagination. I remembered mischiefs dreamed up and executed seamlessly, and sentences shared, and snickering giggles when we were supposed to be penitent. I remembered secrets and hopes whispered in the dark, and vows of eternal friendship spoken as solemnly as those of the Rangers to their Chieftain.

I turned my head and looked Lord Elladan square in the eye and said fiercely, "I will not let her die." I stood and braced my hands on the table. "Please. I know you are injured as well, my lord, but please. Teach me what I must do to help keep her alive."

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><p><em>Ped edhellen<em>—speak in Elvish

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><p><em>Thank you so much for reading!<em>


	18. Folly to Shoulder the Burden

_A/N: Long time since I updated; thanks for being patient!_

_Thank you to Lauren for her sweet and generous review-it made my day to see you're reading and enjoying, and I really appreciate that you took the time to tell me what you like. Feedback like yours it what makes all the work worthwhile :D_

_Also to my other guest reviewer, thank you so, so much! Your comments were so encouraging! I'd love to write a book someday but I certainly have lots to learn. One of the beauties of fanfiction-it's good practice :D_

_My betas are the best in the business._

_Disclaimer still applies._

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><p>XVIII<p>

_Folly to Shoulder the Burden_

"Again, with the brandy," Elladan said, handing me the wrung-out cloth, and I dragged my sleeve across my dripping forehead. The fire was roaring and every vessel we could scrounge sat on the stovetop full of simmering water. Our supplies were meager; the waystation was stocked with only one copper kettle and two iron pans, and it seemed I could not heat water quickly enough to keep up with all my scrubbing.

For Elladan had taken me up on my request, and told me that helping keep Sive alive meant warding off infection. I spent the hours before the others returned scouring every solid surface in the dugout with water so hot it blistered my hands, and then again with the Chieftain's brandy. I batted down cobwebs and drizzled the dirt floor to settle the dust and hung a line between the ceiling beams on which to hang the drying cloths. While I worked, Elladan cleaned and boiled the Chieftain's instruments and replaced them in their case.

Once Sive stirred, her whimper nearly too low to hear, and Elladan, who had been swabbing the tabletop with pungent liquor, was at her side so quickly I barely saw him move. She arched and tried to roll, but Elladan held her flat with hands at hip and shoulder and spoke gentle words in a lovely tongue I did not comprehend. Soon Sive quieted. Her face again grew peaceful in sleep.

"Come here," said Elladan over his shoulder. When I knelt across from him he flipped up the bottom of the blanket. Sive slept unheeding in Elrohir's spare shirt, and on her it was as long as a nightgown. "At the top of her foot—" he pressed it lightly. "—is where we gauge if the splinting ties are cutting off her pulse. Tell me when you feel it."

My fingers were stiff and clumsy and I could feel nothing until Elladan nudged them nearer to her toes.

"There," I said. It was fainter than the one at her throat.

"Watch it closely, and the color of her face." He rose and collected the empty waterskins and opened the door.

"You're leaving?" I said, alarmed. "What if she wakes?"

"If she wakes, you must keep her calm until I return," he said, his tone suggesting that my question had an obvious answer. But the panic in my face must have softened him, because he sighed. "A minute only," he said more gently. "To send the watchmen after fresh water. She will sleep at least that long."

I remembered clearly the Chieftain's charge, and weighed the two evils, and found, a little to my own surprise, that I was less willing to displease Aragorn than Elladan.

"Please, my lord," I said. "I will take them. The Chieftain says you should not leave."

"The _Chieftain_…" Elladan muttered, his eyes narrowing, but he must have thought better of what he wished to say, for he did not continue.

I gave him a remorseful look. "You do not wish for me to get into trouble, do you, my lord?"

"I sincerely doubt you need my help with that," he said with some asperity, but in the end relented me the waterskins. "They are on the hill," he added as I started down the tunnel.

On the slope above the door where the trees grew skewed to the ground, their southernmost roots escaping the earth, I could see a pair of hunched figures. As soon as I started to climb, my sore leg hitching, the slimmer of the two leapt to his feet and bounded down the hill to meet me.

"How is she?" asked Halvard breathlessly, smearing back his hood. "Sive, I mean. Is she…"

"She's sleeping," I said. "Lord Elladan touches her and she goes out like a candle."

"Does he… do they say she'll…"

He was fluttery with fear and uncertainty, but I found I had no words to reassure him. I realized I had been given none myself.

"She is sleeping," I said again. "And the Chieftain says she must eat when Elrohir returns with meat."

Halvard blew out a breath. "Well that's good," he said. "Isn't that a good sign, that she is hungry?"

I thought of her white face and moaning whimpers. "I don't think she's hungry," I said. I shouldered off the waterskins and handed them to him. "Lord Elladan asked if you would get more water." As soon as I said it, I recalled the last time I had spoken to Halvard, only that morning_. I think you're just shirking the work_, he had said, and abruptly I wished I could take back the skins and go to the stream myself. "Or I can, if you are busy watching…"

Halvard squared his shoulders. Elrohir's dagger hung at his hip, and he swept aside his cloak and set his hand on the pommel of it. "I will go," he said. "Lord Elladan may need your help to tend the wounded."

I found myself inordinately grateful for this—he could have just as easily needled me about my own wound, rubbing sorer my earlier shame. Feeling generous, I said, "It was brave of you to kill the wolf."

I would have forgiven him had he puffed up with pride and regaled me with the tale of his mighty slaying. Instead he seemed to grow thinner, and there was suddenly such pleading in his wide eyes I thought immediately of Celwen, and how she looked at me when she was in trouble and begging me not to tattle.

"It was mostly dead when I got there," he said softly. "Cabor had kicked it in the head and it was stunned. But I stabbed it, and now they think I am brave, and your father called me a little Ranger…"

"I would not have stabbed it," I said truthfully. "I would not have gone near it. You don't think you are brave?"

Halvard was fingering the strap of the waterskin over his shoulder and at my words he twisted it viciously. "I am a coward," he muttered. "When the orcs came I pushed Sive up a tree and ran away."

"You ran for help," I said with a flare of impatience. I did not understand his anger with himself. "Elrohir would have fallen if you had not gone for help. It was the only thing you could have done."

"I could have stayed and faced them," he said. "I should not have left her. If I had not left…"

I swatted his shoulder with the back of my hand. "Stop it," I snapped, "or I will tell Elrohir on you, and he will throw you in the stream again. Don't you remember what he said? He said it is folly to shoulder the burden."

Halvard stared at me so blankly I lost my temper and hit him again. "Oh, go away," I snapped. To my mortification, my throat had begun to burn with tears. I shoved him down the hill. Looking slightly bewildered at my capricious change of mood, he jogged away towards the stream.

I glanced uphill and saw that Bôr was sitting with his head tipped sideways against the trunk of the tree he sat beneath. Sleeping, I realized, and my stomach curled with disgust. I stamped a distance around the face of the hill, until I could see a little more clearly through the trees laid out below me, and sat down in a patch of buckbrush to keep watch until Halvard returned.

Halvard. Honorable, courageous Halvard. Berating himself when the others were lauding his heroism. Halvard, who was beginning to wear his borrowed dagger with a jaunt of self-assurance, his shoulders a little broader each new time I saw him. I knew my father did not think twice to charge him with the watch. He had lost no trustworthiness in the course of our adventure, though he flogged himself with fault. Fault that lay squarely on my own head.

I knew not whether to pity him or hate him.

The light was fleeing. I had been sitting feeling weary and irritable for perhaps half an hour when an oddly-shaped shadow separated itself from the deeper gloom between the trees, and I sat up, feeling my spine prickle. I glanced up the hill where Bôr slumped against his tree trunk, and then back down at the oncoming shadow, and thought for a moment my head might burst from indecision. If I shouted the alarm, Elladan would not hear me so far up the hill, and I did not have faith that the farmer would be of any use if it was an enemy that approached.

But I relaxed again as the shadow came into the last dregs of light and became the Chieftain, and walking alongside him, Halvard. They had split the burden of the water vessels between them and when they halted at the base of the hill, Aragorn took the three that Halvard carried and hefted them over his own shoulder. In the dim light I saw him smile and rake his fingers through Halvard's wooly hair, and he spoke something that made Halvard grin in answer. With a word and a playful push the Chieftain sent him bounding back up the hill to his post.

"He said to come," said Halvard as he passed me, and his face had lost some of its weariness. His eyes were bright and crinkled as if he had been laughing.

Slowly I made my way down the incline to where the Chieftain waited, feeling stiff and achy but trying not to show it. When I reached his side a thought occurred to me, and I looked up at his face, feeling a stab of alarm. He had told me to stay inside.

"I was not being rebellious!" I said hastily. "I only was watching while Halvard filled the waterskins, so Lord Elladan did not have to leave…"

The Chieftain smiled slightly and gave my shoulder a squeeze. "I know," he said. "You did well." His hand moved to my nape and guided me ahead of him through the door into the waystation.

**-o0o-**

"You found it," said Elladan, lifting the flat leaves and inhaling the scent of them, and some of the color returned to his face in a rush. When he opened his eyes, they seemed somehow clearer.

"And feel better-equipped for having it," said Aragorn as he laid down his pack and the vessels he carried. He crossed the room to where the injured lay sleeping and crouched beside Sive and laid the backs of his fingers against her cheek. He pushed aside her blankets to press his fingertips to the top of her foot, and then re-covered her gently. Next he turned to the old woman and felt her face as well, and the papery skin inside her wrist, and then rose and rejoined us at the table.

"Sleeping deeply," he said, looking levelly at the elder twin.

"You have your methods, and I have mine," said Elladan. He dropped the herb on the table and turned away to stoke the fire.

"You know it, Eluned?" asked the Chieftain, flipping one leaf over with a fingertip.

"Athelas," I said without having to think about it. "What will you use it for?"

"I hope very much that I will not have need to use it at all," he said as he gathered the leaves and tucked them away into a pocket inside his leather bag, and after that he would speak no more about it. Into a simmering pan of water he cast a handful of other, dried herbs, and three pinches of cream-colored powder he kept in little tin. While the brew steeped he pulled out a stump to sit upon and drew me near and turned me towards the wall. I felt him pull away the top of the bandage. His fingers pressed—"Tender here?" and I shook my head.

"Just around where you stitched."

"Good," he murmured, and rose and returned to the stove. The tea was brown and smelled strongly of herbs, and he poured a measure into a bowl and brought it to where I sat at the table with my chin propped in my hands.

"What is it?" I asked, suddenly wary.

"Horrible medicine that will make you gag," he said solemnly, setting the bowl down in front of me. "But you will drink it all, regardless."

I braced myself and sipped, and my palate flooded with sweet, spicy warmth that all but concealed the bitterness of willow. I swallowed and sipped again and glared up at him for tricking me. His mouth was straight and his eyes merry.

"Where did you go?" I asked him, taking another sip.

"For a walk in the woods."

"Did you see more orcs?"

"No," he said, pouring tea into a second bowl, "they hear me coming and run for their lives." He turned and handed the bowl to Elladan, who took it with an arch in his eyebrow.

"How far behind are they?" he asked.

"The first will come in the morning," the Chieftain answered. "They've camped on the track for the night."

I felt my eyes go wide. "By morning?" I squeaked. "How will we fight them? Ada and Elrohir are gone, and—"

"Refugees, not goblins," the Chieftain cut in. "Catching up at last. By morning, the clearing outside will look like a hobbit birthday party."

"Oh," I said, feeling relieved and a little foolish. I took another sip to mask the heat that bloomed in my face.

"You spoke with them?" Elladan asked.

"I watched from the hill. They are guarded well enough, by Halbarad and the others. I will have all of tomorrow to take counsel and hear complaints."

Elladan snorted but did not comment.

"Halbarad met me," the Chieftain continued, "and had spoken with some of the families—the woodsmen from the southern swards, who sustained the worst of the attacks." He glanced at the old woman who slumbered in the corner of the room.

"They choose to live on the edge of the Wild away from good stone walls, where your Rangers are stretched too thin to guard them," said Elladan curtly. "They know the risk they run."

"Knowing makes no easier the burying of sons."

"Though it may have prevented it."

Aragorn's voice grew a careful edge. "But for the outliers, the village itself may have been caught unawares."

Elladan straightened where he stood, his eyes igniting. "But for the _outliers_, your men and mine would not be _wasting_ their time—"

"_Elladan_," the Chieftain snapped, though somehow he sounded more weary than cross, and it occurred to me that this was an old contention between them. His eyes fell closed, and he pressed his thumb into the corner of the left one, looking for a moment so much like Elladan did when annoyed that I had to smother a startled little laugh. It was a strange irony, and equally strange seeing them at variance. It made me think of my elder sister Lútha, and how she and I quarreled over everything from history lessons to whose turn it was to lime the privy.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Both seemed to collect themselves in their own way: Aragorn silently, studying the table, Elladan by tapping one forefinger in a brief aggravated staccato against his thigh.

"If forcing them west would protect them, I would," said Aragorn at last, not looking up. "The authority is mine to enforce a state of evacuation. Even martial law, if I deemed it necessary." He splayed his hand carefully against the table top "But they make their own choice, and choose the risk that comes with independence, steading as they do on the edge of the Wild. If my own lot was a different one, I sometimes think that I would run the same risk for a hundred acres of good black farmland on Bruinen's banks."

Aragorn looked up then. "But mine is the lot of a Ranger, not a farmer. And also a Chieftain who must govern with judiciousness a people accustomed in many ways to governing themselves. Despotism for the sake of my own… _convenience_ will return nothing but resentment and revolt."

"_Despotism_." Elladan said with a scoff. "It would take an imaginative mind to accuse you of _that_. They wish to govern themselves when the fields are green and the Rangers running ragged to keep the foul things out of them. But as soon as the foul things come creeping, they accuse their own Chieftain for failing to guard them, and blame him for crops burned and sons slain?" He gave an elegant little toast with his crude wooden bowl. "You have more forbearance than I, Master Chieftain."

"No great accomplishment is that," said Aragorn dryly.

Elladan took a long slow sip.

"Now, if you are quite through berating me about belligerent woodsmen—" Aragorn began.

"I would hardly call it _berating_..."

"—then I would humbly suggest you take your badly-rattled skull and lay it down for a few hours."

"A suggestion you can _humbly_—"

The Heir of Imladris was abruptly cut off when Aragorn scooped a spare blanket off the floor and flung it at his face.

"I will sit up with them," said the Chieftain, and Elladan shifted for a moment and then drained his bowl and laid it primly on the tabletop. He glided to the dirt floor near the stove and wadded the blanket beneath his head for a pillow and stretched out and laced his fingers over his belly.

Aragorn shook his head minutely. Then he turned and said, "You as well, little Lune."

He did not need to tell me twice. I stretched my arms and yawned and crossed the room and lay down near to Sive, and very soon was drifting away. Before sleep took me entirely, I cracked one eye and saw the Chieftain snuffing all but one candle, and then he stood his sword against the wall near him and unsheathed his dagger and laid it naked upon the tabletop. The last I knew was the sight of him sitting tipped back on his stump, his keen eyes unblinkingly watching the door.

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><p><em>Thank you so much for reading, and to everyone who has followedfavorite and continues to wait on my sporadic updates!_


	19. Poor Reasons to Dash Alone Into the Dark

_A/N: Apologies again for the delay in updating! I'm so, so grateful to everyone who continues to read, and for all the lovely comments and the follows/favorites. Immense thanks to Eliason for the guest review... I can't promise my updates will come as quickly as they did in the beginning, but I _do_ promise I will complete the story! Life has been on the hectic side lately so there's a chance I overlooked replying to someone-please let me know if this is you, because I can't stand the thought that I've failed to thank someone for all the support and encouragement!_

_There are a couple of moments of Elvish in this chapter and I feel it necessary to mention again that I have no idea what I'm doing, so if it's wrong, let me know so I can fix it!_

_I have three incredibly patient and skilled beta readers, and they all write spectacular stories. Go have a look and leave them a nice review._

_All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien._

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><p><strong>XIX<strong>

_Poor Reasons To Dash Alone Into the Dark _

The sky was shadowed, the air near the ground weighted down with an oily fog. Through it came a tide of enemies but before I could turn to flee they were met by a warrior who bore upon his brow a white light, a name on his lips and a flame in his hand. Behind him came others with gleaming swords who flung themselves joyously into the battle, taking up the call that snarled like thunder down their narrow line. But the dark soldiers were coming in a wave and I knew these few men would be overcome, knew they would be ripped down and butchered and strewn like dust upon the plain on which they battled.

But then another raced to join them, one who bore a great standard, fiery gems searing across a field of midnight, and I saw then that the day would be won, knew as bright knights rallied to the emblem from away across the field that the tide of twisted creatures would break upon these men and fall away in ruin. The standard-bearer turned then, driving his banner exultantly into the sky, and through the glaze of blood that blackened his face I recognized my father's wolfish grin.

Then the spear erupted in a red mist from his breastbone, crunching through the center of the star embossed in silver on his surcoat, and I felt in my own viscera the wrench and tear and shredding separation as the light within him flared intolerably and then fled like a falcon caught on a high cold wind…

When I woke I had thrashed into the corner nearest the door. I heard a mutter in the gloom, a sharp sound of impact and a soft curse, but I could not attend to these things. I knew only the smell of blood and the horror of battle and the desperate need to see for myself that all I had seen had been no more than a dream. I lunged to my feet and yanked open the door and plummeted out into the cold night air.

The moon had risen, and by its light I found the path upon which my father had left. I pelted down it as fast as my hitching leg would carry me. Voices called but I did not heed them—not out of rebellion, but sheer, unfettered fear. I thought perhaps I heard shouts, or the thin distant knell of swords away through the trees, and veered off the narrow path into the undergrowth. I crashed through low bushes, feeling branches whip across my face, but did not slow until a low-lying root snagged my toe and sent me sprawling. I could not put out my hands quickly enough to keep my cheek from smacking into the mud.

Hoofbeats. Through the watery moonlight a horse came thundering, the rider pressed low over its neck as it leapt a fallen tree and skidded to a standstill. Elrohir flung himself to the ground beside me and wrenched me up by my arm. He shoved me ahead of him towards the grey mare. I looked back frantically, straining to see behind, dragging my feet in a last attempt to hear or glimpse anything to give me hope, and Elrohir snarled an oath and caught me above the knee and all but hurled me onto the mare's bare back. He vaulted up behind me and sent her flying with a hissed word.

I had not run far. In a mere minute Lithui glided to a halt alongside the bank of the hill. Elrohir slid to the ground and turned to pull me after him. He kept me from landing harshly but as soon as I was balanced on my feet he moved his hand to the scruff of my tunic and propelled me unyieldingly towards the waystation door.

"I have to go to him!" I cried. I gripped his wrist, trying to loosen his clasp on my collar. "Please, Elrohir, you must let me go! He will be slain if you do not let me go!" I was close to crying, not from his less-than-gentle treatment nor from the flowering pain in my leg, but because I was certain that my dark dream played out inescapably somewhere just beyond the circle of my sight.

"Hush, girl, keep your voice down," he said softly, reinforcing his command with a sharp shake, and though his hand did not ease, his pace did. He halted and drew me around to face him and the starlight leapt in reflection from the surface of his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"My father! He will be killed, I saw it! I saw it in my dream, please, Elrohir, let me go! I must warn him!" I dug my fingernails into the back of his hand, trying to pry his fingers from their inflexible grip, and finally they released me. But only long enough to settle again, encircling my arms above the elbows.

"Tell me what you saw," he said, and the biting edge of his voice had softened a little.

"He will be slain by a spear," I said, my voice ringing still with a discordant note of panic. "He has a black banner with jewels and there is an orc with a spear and—"

Elrohir did a strange thing then. He released my arm and palmed my forehead like my mother did when she felt for a fever, but with his touch came the oddest sensation of examination, not unlike a hand feeling down a limb for injury. As quickly as this came, it vanished again, and left in its wake was a numbing tranquility I felt my mind meld into as poured honey melds heavily into itself.

"_Av'osto_," he murmured, a gentle command. "It was only a dream." He loosened his hold. "A frightening dream, and dark, but no more than that. And by all the blessed stars, child, if you do any more rushing off on your own when you have been told to stay put…" He elected to finish the sentiment with a last little shake, brisk but not cruel. "He will return soon, and you can see for yourself that dreams are poor reasons to dash alone into the dark."

"It frightened me!"

"Of that I have no doubt."

"What if it is a vision? Grandmother Ivorwen is foresighted—what if what I saw was a portent?"

Elrohir blew out a breath. "Your grandmother is wise enough to not run screaming into the bushes every time she awakens from a frightening dream, portent or no."

"I was not screaming!"

"Elrohir?" came the Chieftain's voice through the dark.

"She is here with me," Elrohir called in answer. Distantly I heard voices, one shrill and another muttering darkly, but then Elrohir drew my attention back by setting his hand on my shoulder and steering me towards the dugout door.

Somehow, he had soothed me, and I felt my fear beginning to fade. Even so I found myself loath to return to the sickroom. Despite all our scrubbing, it still smelled of blood, and I would have to sleep again and dreaded the horrors that awaited me. And with Elrohir returned, I knew another regret entirely might keep me awake if I did not have it out and over with. My throat constricted at the thought of what I knew I must say, but I shrugged from beneath his hand and turned to face him before my courage deserted me.

"Elrohir…"

Though I could not see his face well in the dark, I knew the expression he wore, his head tipped forward slightly as he waited for me to continue. I think he was anticipating yet another insurrection, or a final debate. I did not fault him for standing poised, as if he thought I might break away again into the trees.

"Elrohir, I…" I felt my eyes begin to burn and very nearly lost my nerve. I found the thought of weeping in front of him unendurable. But equally so was the thought of spending one more moment being battered by remorse.

"I am sorry," I said shakily. "I am sorry for not obeying you, and for causing you so much trouble. And I am sorry for—" My voice broke. I ground my teeth together to imprison my sob. "I am sorry for Cabor," I whispered at last.

I heard his soft sigh, saw the dim outline of his shoulders sag a little. He did not answer, and I did not blame him. I murmured it one last time, _I'm_ _so sorry_, and turned to flee back into the dugout.

"Do you want to know something about Cabor?" he asked, and the question stopped me in my tracks. I turned slowly and nodded once, knowing he could see me even in the dark.

"When he was a colt, barely started under saddle, I decided to use him on my circuit of the valley. A good chore for a spirited youngster, and I reckoned I would dampen his exuberance with miles at a long-trot and a few steep hills." To my consternation, he breathed the barest laugh. "Elladan thought me the thickest kind of fool."

"Why would he think that?" I asked, my head tipping sideways.

"Young horses must learn to be apart from the others," he said. "They are creatures accustomed to a herd, and must be taught contentment, with only their rider for company. Elladan though Cabor was far too green. The first day we rode together. The second, we divided, and when Cabor realized he was alone he did what I should have been expecting him to."

I found myself drawn in by his story, despite my fear that he would hold me at fault forever, and never speak to me again. "What did he do?"

Elrohir laughed outright. "He tossed me like a mule tosses a milkboy, and arrived the next morning in our father's courtyard, white with lather and dragging my battered saddle beneath him. My family was quite certain I had been slain."

I felt my nose wrinkling. "He must have given a mighty jump to toss _you_," I said.

He laughed again, softly. "The mightiest."

For a while there was only silence.

"He was a brave horse," Elrohir went on at last, "and the most faithful of friends, and I shall miss him viciously." He found the end of my braid in the dark and gave it a gentle tug. "But he was only a horse, _penneth_. And if I had chance to choose again, I would give him up gladly to keep you and Sive from being killed."

For a long time I had no answer. We stood together and I looked up to see Gil-Estel blazing above the treetops. It was later than I had thought, and weariness descended like a sudden crushing weight. I yawned hugely and said to the stars, "Will you ever have another like him?"

It took him a moment to answer. "In Imladris," he started slowly, "where one of Bruinen's tributaries falls over a cliff of white stone, there is a field hemmed in on three sides by the knees of the Hithaeglir. In that field is a band of young horses. They will be two-year-olds in the springtime, and finest among them is a blood-bay colt, with clean legs and a soft eye, and nary a thread of white upon him."

I felt myself warm at the image he spun for me, at the thought of the bay colt and his fellows in that high green field. I wondered if in a year or two the amulet of feather and shell would hang again behind a neat young ear.

"Is he the son of Cabor?"

"He is," said Elrohir. "And he will be a warlord like his ada." I could hear the grin in his voice and realized I'd been forgiven even before I'd found the courage to ask. He leaned across the space between us and nudged my ribs with his elbow. "I think I shall call him 'Leweg'."

-o0o-

I did not go back inside, but followed Elrohir when he climbed the hill and relieved Bôr and Halvard in the watch. He had not invited me, but neither did he send me back. I sat near him and did not intend to sleep again, but soon my lids became leaden and I floated for a moment on that strange hazy horizon between sleep and wakefulness. I woke with a start when my body slackened to the side, and then a warm heavy weight settled and I realized Elrohir had flung his cloak across my shoulders. I pulled it close under my chin, breathing for a moment the smells of horse and leather and woodsmoke, and faintly beneath them, wisps of high sweet pine and summer thunderstorms. I filled my lungs with those scents and found that the night no longer choked me. My foul dream was a mere scrap of cobweb in the cellar of my mind. I stretched out on the mossy loam, rolled into Elrohir's cloak until it was snug over my shoulder, and when sleep came again, I welcomed it.

-o0o-

I woke to dim daybreak, and for a moment I did not know where I was. My face was cold and my arms bound to my sides and I thrashed to free them, fighting to clear my mind of the murkiness of sleep. I saw the moss in front of my nose and beyond, a wheat-colored boot adorned with blue feathers and luminous shell. I tugged loose from the hold of the cloak and sat up blinking.

Elrohir stood close to the tree and watched carefully the wood below us. To the east the light of dawn was beginning to plume through the trees in layers and shafts, reddening the morning mist. I strained to see whatever had alerted him, doing my best to breathe quietly, and then Halvard emerged from the crest of the hill that overhung the waystation door and began to bound up towards us.

When he was near enough to speak without shouting he heaved a breath and gasped, "The Chieftain needs your help, my lord."

Elrohir did not wait for further explanation but scooped up his quiver of arrows and slung it over his shoulder as he flew down the hill.

Halvard and I followed. Seeing Elrohir leap so suddenly into action had caused my heart to fling itself against my ribs, and as we skidded after him, slipping on loam and dead leaves, I could feel my pulse in my throat like a thrashing bird.

"Is it Sive?" I demanded of Halvard as we ran.

"I don't know. I don't know, Eluned, I was sleeping in the tunnel and did not see, but he sent me for Elrohir and there was blood on his hands, so much blood—"

The ground flattened and the door to the left of us came into view. Elrohir was nearly to it when it opened and the Chieftain emerged. His sleeves were shoved above his elbows and his hands and arms and the front of his shirt were smeared and spattered with glistening red. He pressed the door shut behind him, leaving half a bloody handprint, and then he whirled and drove his fist into the lintel post hard enough that I heard a splintering _crack_. I wondered, alarmingly and fleetingly, if beam or bone had fractured. But he hit it again, softer and flat-handed, and I saw where the surface had shattered, clean and sharp and yellow-colored against the rest of the grey and weathered wood.

My throat constricted and my lungs refused to fill. I was fighting for air, rallying the breath that would allow me to demand of him, _Who is it? What has happened? _

But before I could, Aragorn breathed a leaden sigh and let his forehead fall onto the sod above the door and said, softly, "We have need of a grave."

* * *

><p><em>Av'osto-<em>do not be afraid

_Leweg-_snake

_Thank you so much for reading!_


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